


who gave you eyes like that (said you could keep them)

by Japery



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Changeling Gabe, Gratuitous Use of ABBA, Groundhog Day, M/M, Magical Boy Sam Girard, Shapeshifting, Time Loop, Troll Kink, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-04 10:46:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18342098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Japery/pseuds/Japery
Summary: “What’s up, JT—” Gabe barely starts, gently pushing Zoey off from where she’s trying to nose at any remains of bacon grease on his hands.“I think Mikko’s turned into a deer again.” Compher says, without preamble.“Fortnite did it!” yells a voice, Josty, distant from the other end of the line. “Fortnite is evil and turned him into a deer, Landy!”





	who gave you eyes like that (said you could keep them)

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [SparkleTindi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SparkleTindi/pseuds/SparkleTindi) in the [wesmashing](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/wesmashing) collection. 



> **Prompt:**  
>  There's just something about Gabe, isn't there? It's not just that he's hot; he's just got this MAGNETISM about him. There's that joke about Swedish hockey players, but what if there is something a little... inhuman about it? Fae Gabe.
> 
> Pairing left open because let's be honest: you can make an argument for shipping our captain with anyone on the team. Go nuts. Also leaving open an option to go dark, since the Fair Folk don't always play nice. ;)
> 
> \---
> 
> i don't claim to know and mean no harm to the people represented in this fic, if you found this by googling yourself or anyone you know, i'd advise you to click right on out of here.
> 
> i guess my brand is just 25k magical epics for avsfam fic challenges huh. this follows no particular season or schedule, but it does operate off the 18-19 rosters. this is heavily inspired by Holly Black's "The Darkest Part of the Forest," and Netflix's Russian Doll that it might be considered a light au? read that if you want some actual dedicated research into fae and folklore because i read a bunch of wikipedia pages and called it a day. 
> 
> thanks to tindi for the prompt that i took and ran with, erica and true for being betas for this monstrosity, and carly rae jepsen's "i really like you" for that incredibly creepy line for the title.

The story starts like this: 

Gabe’s parents don’t put much stock in troll stories or fae warnings, before they become his parents. Bea is strong, and healthful, and they only get her christened as a formality more than anything else. The fire on the hearth sits crisp and cheery in the autumn air, and they laugh as Bea splashes around the basin of holy water so they don’t much notice the shadows that grow when the water hits the floor of the church and seeps between the cracks in the wood, when the fire takes a heavy breath, and gasps, and smolders out entirely. 

They don’t notice the rustling in the leaves as they take Bea home, the groaning of the trees along the road as they suffer under undue weight. They don’t notice the lengthening of light under the windowsill as they laid Bea down in her bassinet, the shifting of dust over the hardwood, or Bea’s delighted giggle as the curtains shift behind them. 

They do notice the baby boy left in her place, head too huge and eyes too bright to be human.

His mother may not have believed much in the troll stories, but she knew them well enough, knew them enough to call the right neighbors. They came with flour and with salt, to bake fresh bread and scatter rock salt over the scant snow. They tell his mother how to summon the troll who took her daughter—the changeling’s mother. They lay the iron poker from the fire in the flames until it’s gleaming hot, and they tell her the troll will come for its screams. 

She sees the changeling, eyes blue as ice and wide as saucers, so like her daughter except for all the ways that he could not be. She holds the poker in one hand, imagines harming him, and lets it fall to her feet. 

One of the neighbor ladies picks it up, tells her that a changeling is no child, and steps towards the boy. His father stands, and his mother moves to get between them, and suddenly, the story goes, there is someone else. 

A woman, but not a woman, tall and fair with eyes bright and cold. She holds a bundle swaddled to her chest, Bea’s hands peeking out between the cloth. She waves her own hand, and the poker clatters to the floor again. 

“You would hurt a babe?” She asks, her voice a sharp strike of flint. His mother shakes her head. 

“Never,” she says. “I’d never.” 

The troll woman presents the baby she’d brought, presses her into his mother’s chest. She holds Bea tight, as if she’d never let go again. The troll woman moves to take a step towards the changeling, still mewling in his bassinet, but his mother blocks her. 

“You don’t get him back.” She says, voice tremulous, but resolute. “Any parent who would give their child up, for a game, for a trick—you don’t deserve him.”

The troll woman hisses, warns a curse on this house, entreats a deal. 

“Damn your curses,” says his mother, or so the story goes. “Damn your deals.” 

They name him Gabriel. 

Or so the story goes. 

//

Gabe wakes up too early for an off-day, with a monster of a headache he can’t shake. He makes a cup of coffee from his machine that turns out too watery, and stumbles into the bathroom, pressing his arms up against the sink to stare at himself in the mirror. His teeth are abnormally sharp, and his eyes are shining bright, frigid blue. The smell of bread no one in his apartment complex is baking wafts in under the door, and Gabe scowls, glancing at the Moon app reminder on his phone. 

Of course, it’s full, and the Mountain King is calling his court for a fete. 

Gabe wanders back into the kitchen and downs his bad coffee with a snarl, sighing as Zoey paws up to him, demanding breakfast. He had been planning on spending his off-day watching Marie Kondo in his underwear and texting bits of her wisdom to Tyson, and he’ll be damned if fairies stop him from doing that.

He manages all right for a while, making bacon he can’t help but sneak a little of to Zoey, and having Alexa blast ABBA songs to drown out the distant tuning of lyres or whatever the fuck fairies played from sneaking in through his window, when he gets a call from Compher. 

“What’s up, JT—” he barely starts, gently pushing Zoey off from where she’s trying to nose at any remains of bacon grease on his hands. 

“I think Mikko’s turned into a deer again.” Compher says, without preamble. 

“Fortnite did it!” yells a voice, Josty, distant from the other end of the line. “Fortnite is evil and turned him into a deer, Landy!” Compher groans, and Gabe is tempted to join him, though not so half-fondly as JT. 

“We were about to play another round,” JT explains gruffly, and there’s a scuffle like he’s trying to shove at Josty. “And then he started making—I guess deer noises?” 

“What do you think deer noises are, Comphy?” Gabe asks, in spite of himself. There’s a pause, as if JT is weighing whether or not to do actual deer noises, when Josty helpfully supplies a low grunting noise. 

“No, it was more like—” JT makes a more high-pitched keen, and Josty responds by grunting again, but louder this time. “No, dumbass, listen it’s—”

“Yeah,” Gabe sighs, rubbing circles into his forehead with his thumb. “Yeah, okay. I’ll go check on him.”

“Thanks, Captain.” JT says dutifully, and Gabe winces. There’s a dull thud from the other end of the line, and Josty’s indignant whisper. 

“You don’t thank a fairy, you dummy, they hate it. This is why you’re always getting curs—” 

“Bye guys.” Gabe says, hanging up on their bickering. Zoey stares balefully at him. Gabe just shrugs.

//

The thing about dealing with Mikko is that sometimes he turns into a deer. Gabe hesitates to call it a Finnish thing, but it happened fairly frequently to a lot of Finns in the league; there was one particularly highlighted instance of Erik Haula shifting into a deer on the ice in the middle of a game with the Wild, and Wheeler was always complaining about how often he’d go to check on Laine and he’d just be a goat, so maybe it was, in fact, a Finnish thing. There were some theories going around that it was tied to stress, or performance, or just the full moon, but Gabe—despite being a changeling—didn’t really know a lot about magical bloodline curses or shifters or anything like that, and it felt kind of a dick move to speculate while his liney was just in his apartment being a deer. 

“Maybe it’s a sex thing.” EJ says from where he’s Facetiming Gabe, phone propped up against a can of Nocco on the coffee table, pushed up against the wall so Mikko doesn’t knock into it. Gabe sits on the couch and keeps a watchful eye on Mikko as he noses at a bowl of Quaker Oats Gabe set out for him. “Maybe he’s not getting laid enough.” 

“Are you volunteering?” Gabe asks, raising one eyebrow. EJ snorts. “Are you sure you can’t come over and help? Like, talk to him or something?” 

Gabe can feel the force of EJ’s annoyed scowl through the phone. “I can’t talk to deer. It’s only horses. We’ve been over this, Gabriel.” 

Gabe waves a hand dismissively. “What’s the difference between deer and horses? They’ve both got four legs and are brown and stuff, and horses don’t even have cool horns or anything.” 

“I’ll come over there and fight you right now.” 

“Yeah right,” Gabe laughs. “Mikko would protect me. Wouldn’t you Mikko?” Mikko snuffs in response, blinking at him, eyes shiny under gleaming white horns, before he turns back to his oats. “See, Mikko would protect me.” 

“The Deerknight Mikko, protector of the Fae Prince Gabe.” EJ proclaims dramatically, flourishing his hand for punctuation. 

“M’not a prince, asshole.” Gabe frowns. The music from the Mountain King’s fete comes in muffled through Mikko’s windows. 

“We don’t know that.” EJ reminds him. “You’re a prince until you give me some evidence to the contrary.” EJ smiles one of his big, toothless grins. “Your majesty.” 

“What about my majesty?” Gabe shoots back, out of habit. EJ rolls his eyes, and the screen flickers into dark glass. The music streaming in from outside gets louder, harp giving way to echoing drums. Gabe’s blood thrums under his skin, bubbling so close to the surface he feels like he might burst. Gabe closes his eyes and grits his teeth, digs his nails into the arm of Mikko’s couch tight enough to leave marks. His heart twists in his chest, and the part of him that’s ancient, yearning, so inhuman, longs to march out into the street, and find his place in the procession. 

The coffee table shakes, and Gabe hears his phone fall to the floor.

There’s a heavy presence looming over him, and then a warm pressure pushing up against his shoulder. Gabe opens his eyes, and there’s Mikko, nuzzling his forehead into Gabe’s arm, putting himself between Gabe and the music coming in behind the blinds. 

“It’s okay, bud.” Gabe finds himself saying, his grip loosening on the couch cushion as his hand finds itself petting the soft, downy fur of Mikko’s forehead. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.” 

There’s a pause as Gabe lets himself pet Mikko for a while, until the music starts to blend into just background noise again. “EJ’s going to kill me for hanging up on him.”

Mikko makes a soft grunt—vaguely, Gabe files away that Josty really was closest that first time—meets his eye, and makes him blink. 

When Gabe opens his eyes, the stag is gone, and in its place is Mikko: completely human and buck ass naked, cheek warm against his thigh as he snuggles up against Gabe’s lap, still fast asleep. 

Gingerly, Gabe disentangles his fingers from Mikko’s hair and lays Mikko’s head down on a pillow to pull him up onto the couch, trying to get him comfortable. Mikko murmurs a little in his sleep at the loss of contact, but doesn’t stir. Gabe pulls the biggest blanket he can find out of Mikko’s closet—a huge fleece with a collage of Michael Jackson album covers that EJ got him for his birthday last year—and drapes it snugly over Mikko’s shoulders. If it’s anything like the last few times, Mikko won’t wake up for a while, but when he does he’ll be ravenous. 

Gabe contemplates ordering a pizza or GrubHubbing some sushi for them when the cheery little Mikko Rantanen song tells him someone’s Facetime-ing him. Gabe puts on his most unapologetic face and says, “I’m not sorry and you’re never going to actually kill me,” he says, fully prepared to face EJ’s scandalized face. Instead, there’s Tyson, raising a perfectly styled eyebrow at him. 

“Just you watch.” Tyson disagrees, chipper, little bunny teeth perfectly framing an unsettlingly serene smile. 

Something in Gabe’s chest loosens, and he smiles back as bright as he can manage. “Hey, Tys,” he says softly. 

“Hey Big Head.” Tyson greets, giving him a cheery little mock salute.“Did you kiss Mikko people again?” 

“Yeah, smooched him right on the mouth and the footstool turned into a dog. Did you want a go?” Tyson snorts and makes a face at him, something with the lighting on the other end of the screen making his ears look a weird shade of red. 

“No thanks, I just had some midnight DQ cravings and I thought Mikko might need some deer snacks.” Tyson runs a hand through his curls, and looks up at the camera to try and meet Gabe’s eyes. “You in?” 

Gabe glances at Mikko, still snoring softly under his Michael Jackson blanket, the thin golden threads of fae magic from his transformations settled behind his shoulder blades, and then back at Tyson, looking at him expectantly. The sound of the Mountain King’s fete, normally raucous and rolling by now, has quieted to a light drumbeat in the back of Gabe’s head. 

“All right.” Gabe says quietly. “I’ll meet you there.” Tyson beams at him, and gives him another salute, his curls falling lightly over his forehead in a way that makes Gabe’s heart skip a little. 

// 

There’s something comforting about hanging out with Tyson—not just one thing, he was good company, annoying and lazy and occasionally rude as he would be, he was one of the funniest, smartest, most charming people Gabe knew: he always had a joke, and he knew when he had to be the one to carry the conversation, and he had a special knack for making awkward silences his own. There were a lot of comforting things about Tyson, but the most comforting thing had to have been just how…normal he was. 

Everyone Gabe had ever met had some contact with the fae woven into their very being, some foreign magic that got under Gabe’s skin and whispered at him from the mountains. Gabe could get used to people’s individual brushes of magic if they got familiar enough; his family was, after all, mostly permeated with his own, and the remains of the deal EJ had made were pulled out with his teeth, but it was always something to navigate, person by person. There were some people with magic rolling off of them in waves. Nate held the magic gifted to him at birth tightly coiled in his shoulders, and it came out in bursts every time he rocketed up the ice, dangled his way past an entire team, held a hockey stick like the greatsword of the champion he was. Mikko’s magic spread out over his back like a shroud, like all he had to do was pull it off and reveal himself to be a deer again. Sam had magic coming off him with every movement, every glance and spin, so much that it gave Gabe a headache to look at him sometimes and he’d had to leave most of his rookie onboarding details to EJ. Even people like Soderberg, who had a Tomte at home to take care of his kitchen, and JT, who had had a couple minor curses put on him angering witches at college, still held the residual effects of magic in them, the mark of the fae who touched them. 

Tyson didn’t have any of that. He was the only person Gabe had ever met who was completely devoid of any lasting touch of fae. Around him, the fete was silent, the silvery magic always threatening to burst out from under Gabe’s skin felt settled. Looking at Tyson was like looking at something so refreshingly, completely human that something in Gabe wanted to hold him close to his chest and make it his own. 

“Why’re you looking at me like that, you weirdo?” Tyson asks, mouth full as he fishes cheesecake bits out of his Blizzard. “Do I have something on my face?”

He did, a thin smattering of blueberry staining his bottom lip, but Gabe scrunches up his nose and leans in closer anyway. “Yeah, it’s just like—” Gabe holds out his hand and waves it over Tyson’s face from forehead to chin. Tyson scowls at him. 

“Fuck you, you’ve got something on your face. It’s, it’s your face.” Tyson sulks, popping another bit of cheesecake in his mouth with his fingers, leaving them sticky sweet with sugar. Gabe grossly has the urge to lick them clean. 

Of course, being around Tyson was when Gabe’s weird fairy urges got their weirdest, too. 

Gabe shakes his head and takes a bite of his own Blizzard, letting the cold of the ice cream bite harsh against his tongue. “Are you sure you’ve never had any experience with magic?” Gabe asks again, staring at the broad expanse of Tyson’s shoulders, completely devoid of anything magical. “No one ever like, turned you into a bird for talking too much or something?”

“Besides you? Not really.” Tyson shrugs, and thinks a little bit. “There was this one time when I was with the Rockets, Damon and I were on a walk and I thought I saw Ogopogo, but it might have been just a log.” He pauses and looks at Gabe seriously. “Can you turn me into a bird for talking too much?” 

Gabe rolls his eyes. “No I can’t—” He stops. He’s not really sure what he can or can’t do, in terms of magic. He’s never actually tried. “I don’t know how.” He says more truthfully. Something twitches in his chest. “Hey, why were you on a lakeside walk with Damon Severson?” 

Tyson snorts, and levels a look at him from over his Blizzard. “What, you never went on lakeside walks in Kitchener?” 

Gabe’s about to retort that no, he hadn’t, but then he remembers a trip to Victoria Park Lake, and ducks his head to hide the color rising to his cheeks. 

“Oh shit, you did!” Tyson exclaims gleefully, waving his half-empty Blizzard around. He leans in conspiratorially. “Did you get up to some lakeside canoodling? Did you skinny dip?” 

Gabe’s skin is probably coloring right now, and he tries to give Tyson his sharpest look. Tyson just sucks in some empty air through his straw in the most audibly unpleasant way he can. 

“Fine, I’ve gone skinny dipping with Jeff Skinner, are you happy?” Really, it hadn’t been a sexual thing, more than a dare to see if the other would chicken out of jumping naked into freezing temperature water like a polar bear plunge, except that they did make out a little after, but Gabe takes some smug satisfaction in the way Tyson chokes on his air.

“You and Skinner?” Tyson repeats, mouth agape. “That must have been so…pale.” Gabe blinks at the flush of Tyson’s cheeks, and he can’t help but laugh. 

There’s a pause between them—Tyson looks like he wants to say something, and is trying to figure out a way to say it—when he gets a text from Mikko, asking where he’d disappeared to, and if he’d disappeared to anywhere that had food. 

“I’ve gotta go.” Gabe says regretfully. “Bambi’s walking.” 

“A little wobbly, ain’t he?” Tyson says, in a picture perfect Thumper voice. It matches his teeth, and Gabe laughs again. “I’ll walk you out.” 

Gabe’s eyes linger a little on Tyson’s shoulders as he shrugs his coat back on and chucks his empty Blizzard cup into the nearby garbage can. “Kobe!” He yells, silently whistling in triumph as it sinks down softly past the rim. He bumps his shoulder against Gabe’s, and Gabe tries not to shiver at the brush of Tyson’s arm wrapping around him to grab the takeout bag stuffed with rapidly cooling burgers for Mikko.

They walk out into the chilly parking lot, as the brisk wind hits Gabe, the sound of the fete comes with it, but quiets as soon as Gabe catches sight of the bright red neon of the Dairy Queen sign framing Tyson’s face against the full moon. 

They walk together, for a little bit, stealing glances at each other in the light. Gabe bumps their shoulders together again, and Tyson smiles at him as he resolves it into a light hip check. They stop near Gabe’s car, and Tyson turns to Gabe, brown eyes shining. 

“You know, I’d be a better skinny dipping partner than Jeff Skinner.” Tyson says, smirk dancing on his face. “I’m way less pale.” 

Gabe traces the bow of Tyson’s lips up to his eyes, warm and questioning. “I’ll hold you to that.” He says, voice deep, and Tyson shakes his head. 

“Fucking fairies, man,” He starts, his laugh partly exasperated and measures more fond. “Only way you could look this good in the moonlight is if you were magical about it.” Gabe moves in to drag his thumb over Tyson’s jaw and bring their gazes to meet. His heart is light and mercurial in his chest, and Tyson feels so fragile in his hand. There’s a swell in the music from the Mountain King’s fete, pounding in Gabe’s ears, a crescendo of brass and woodwind trying to claw Gabe’s heart out from under his skin. Tyson’s breath catches as he drinks in the intensity of Gabe’s eyes meeting his. 

“I’m a troll. Must be because I’m with you.” Gabe says softly, and he kisses him. 

And for the first time all night, the music falls completely silent. 

Tyson tastes like ice cream and cheesecake. His lips are cold, but warming under Gabe’s as he folds into the kiss. Tyson tastes so completely, wonderfully mortal that Gabe wants to drink him all up and devour him, take that mortality and make it his own. Gabe’s hand wanders down to envelop Tyson’s hip, the other settling softly in his curls. 

Tyson murmurs under him, shifting to press the seam of his mouth onto Gabe’s neck, up over his jaw like he’s trying to memorize every angle of Gabe’s face with his mouth, and Gabe desperately, desperately wants to do the same. Gabe gets their mouths together again, trying to pull Tyson closer, as close as he can get. Tyson chuckles underneath him, the sound of it vibrating on Gabe’s breath as Tyson drags his teeth over Gabe’s lips to pull them apart. He presses something into Gabe’s hands, and Gabe realizes it’s the paper takeout bag. 

“As many times as I’ve fantasized about sucking your dick in a Dairy Queen parking lot, captain,” Tyson starts, his lips kiss-bitten red in a way that almost distracted from the way Tyson saying that sent a shiver down Gabe’s spine. “If our deer doesn’t get fed, he’s going to start calling the rest of the team, and God or Titania help us if he wakes up Nathan.” 

Gabe swallows, eyes bright, and he nods reluctantly. “Can I meet you after?” He asks, and Tyson laughs, leaning him to kiss him again, quick and easy. 

“I’ll be at yours. Someone needs to feed Zoey, right?” Gabe kisses him again, for longer than he should, until Tyson is pushing him off and towards his car, feeling punch drunk and heady. 

As Tyson gets into his own car, the music floods back in to fill the space he left, but Gabe has so many better things to worry about now. 

//

Mikko pulls him into a full body hug, still very much naked, as soon as he crosses the threshold with food. “Thank you!” He exclaims, and winces as it literally stings against Gabe’s ears. “Sorry,” he says sheepishly, the blush going down much farther than Gabe expected. 

“It’s fine,” Gabe says, shaking it off. “You wanna put some clothes on for me though, buddy?” Mikko blushes again, even deeper this time, and ducks into his room. 

When Mikko comes back he’s wearing worn grey sweatpants and an Avs shirt much too small for him and with a number that very much isn’t his own--He must’ve stolen one of Nate’s at some point. He makes a beeline for the food, ripping into a burger like a man possessed, or a man who had just spent the last several hours in a different form. 

Gabe leans against the doorframe while Mikko eats for a little bit, thinking about how Tyson must be close to his place by now, thinks about him waiting for him. “Tha—” Mikko starts, before stopping himself, shaking his head. “You are best captain, for coming helping me again.” He says instead, the magic rolling over his back arches, as if to mimic his appreciation. Gabe smiles at him, as warm as he can muster. 

“I’m glad you were playing with JT, or you would’ve been by yourself.” His smile slips a little at the thought of Mikko just wandering around this too-empty apartment as a deer on his own. He scrunches his nose. “Not that I’m giving props to Fortnite. Maybe you should think about getting another roommate?”

Mikko shrugs, his shoulders straining against his shirt. “I think about it. Everyone has a wife or girlfriend.” 

Gabe thinks about Tyson again, wonders what he’s doing. “Or boyfriend.” He reminds Mikko, who flushes again. 

“Or boyfriend.” Mikko agrees wistfully. There’s a slight pause, and Gabe can’t help it anymore. 

“I kissed Tyson.” He says, half-giddy, and Mikko’s eyes bug out. 

“When?” He asks, smile bright and disbelieving. 

“Just now.” Gabe admits. Mikko slaps the table ecstatically. “He’s waiting at my place.”

Mikko grins at him and throws a balled up Dairy Queen napkin at him. “And you come bring me food! Go, go! I’ll be fine here. Maybe call Nate to come over.” 

Gabe laughs and dodges another napkin. “You’re not gonna turn into a deer again, are you?” 

Mikko throws an entire wrapper, still greasy from the burger he’d just finished off. “I won’t—” He says a Finnish word here that Gabe doesn’t understand, and ushers him out the door. 

He shakes his head and pulls out his phone, where there’s a picture of Tyson with Zoey sitting in his messages. Without another thought, he saves it, and tells Tyson he’s on his way. 

//

“You should really stop giving out your spare key.” Tyson says. Zoey’s head is cradled comfortably in his lap as they lay together on the couch, and Gabe can’t help but smile. “Any handsome stranger could come in here and feed your dogs.”

“Well, if all the handsome strangers look like you I think I’ll be just fine.” Tyson makes a face at him. 

“God, be more charming.” Tyson mutters, rolling his eyes, but it sounds fond. 

“Hey girl,” Gabe says to Zoey, striding over to scritch under her ears. “Did you have a good time with Tyson?” Zoey snuffs under his touch, buries herself a little more in Tyson’s lap. “You’re kind of in my spot, Zo.” He says, grin wolfish and wide. 

Tyson snorts at him, leaning up to capture his lips in a kiss. The kiss is greedy and exacting, Tyson drawing just as much out of Gabe as he wants and gobbling it up. Tyson’s lips are a feast, and Gabe’s been through famine. Just as soon as they come, they’re gone, and Gabe’s left breathless. 

“There’s still a dog on my lap, Gabriel.” Tyson explains patiently, and sure enough, Zoey is caught between them, staring at Gabe balefully. Gabe smiles sheepishly, pulling Zoey off of Tyson to guide her towards her dog bed. Tyson blatantly watches the stretch of his shirt over his arms as he lifts and Gabe can’t help but show off a little. 

Gabe kind of wants to sit in Tyson’s lap now, but Tyson is getting up, hooking a finger in the collar of his shirt, and pulling him towards the kitchen. “Wash your hands, captain.” Tyson says. “I love Zoey, but we’re not banging with dog all over.” 

“Someone’s bossy.” Gabe shakes his head, turning to the sink to do as he’s told. He kind of likes it when Tyson’s bossy, but he’s not going to tell him that. 

“Do you have like, special soap?” Tyson asks, peering over his shoulder. 

Gabe checks, looking at the ridged pink soap in the dish, coloring when he realizes. “It’s, uh, called fairy kisses. Bea got it on Etsy for our birthday as a joke. It smells like coconut, mostly.” 

Tyson makes the purest, most delighted face at him. He leans over to paw at it, hip laid comfortably against Gabe’s. “It smells like coconut!” He exclaims. “Do your kisses taste like coconut?” Gabe flicks a soap bubble towards him. 

“You’ve been kissing me all night.” Gabe reminds him, wiping his hands on a dish towel. “Do they?” 

“Well, now I’m not sure, eh?” Tyson grins at him, crowding him up against the sink by his hips. “Might have to kiss you more to find out.” Gabe flushes, eyes tracing over the bow of Tyson’s lips, and he wipes off the last of the soap suds on Tyson’s nose with his thumb. 

“Wash your hands first, Four.” 

“Now who’s bossy?” Tyson mutters, but he seizes on the soap greedily. When he’s done, Tyson makes grabbing motions towards the towel Gabe’s still holding, and Gabe throws it at his chest. 

“You know what the Dairy Queen parking lot and your kitchen have in common?” Tyson asks conversationally. Gabe raises an eyebrow at him. Tyson smirks. “I’ve thought about sucking you off in both a lot.” 

Gabe doesn’t have a lot of time to respond to that, except for how it goes straight to his dick, because Tyson sinks to his knees like he’s blocking a shot and pins him up against the sink by his hips with both hands, going for the button of his jeans like it was Gabe’s fairy kisses hand soap. 

“Hope this tastes like coconut.” Tyson says cheekily as he unbuttons Gabe’s jeans and pulls them and his underwear down his thighs, revealing Gabe’s rapidly hardening cock. Tyson licks his lips, once, and looks up at Gabe, eyes dark and hungry, before he licks a long stripe up from the base of Gabe’s cock and takes it in his mouth as far as he can. 

“Fuck, Tys,” Gabe groans, voice husky, nails pressing against the wood of his cabinets as Tyson pushes him backwards. One of his hands snakes its way back into Tyson’s curls, pushing down lightly as Tyson takes him deeper, swirling his tongue over the underside of Gabe’s cock. 

One of Tyson’s hands braces at Gabe’s hip, rubbing low circles into his thigh, and the other one lays over Gabe’s stomach, fluttering rhythmically up and down as Tyson moves, taking him in and—

“Are you petting my abs?” Gabe asks, a little choked up. 

Tyson pulls off of him and glares. “I’m still not convinced this isn’t some weird fairy dream. Shut up and let me have this, Gabriel.” Tyson’s pupils are blown out and his lips are bright pink and glistening with saliva. His voice is hoarse and breathy and sends a shiver down Gabe’s spine.

Gabe leans down and drags a thumb over Tyson’s jaw, feeling him breathe in the palm of his hand. “This definitely isn’t a weird fairy dream.” Gabe tells him, firm as he can before he takes the opportunity to pull him into a kiss, heavy, and searing, and real. Then he shuts up, and lets him have it. 

Tyson’s eager to get back to his ministrations, pressing a hand over Gabe’s thigh to sink his mouth back down over Gabe’s cock. He’s good at this, obscenely good, and yet Gabe’s a little obsessed with the ways Tyson has to negotiate around the sheer size of his cock, the way his bright red lips pull taut over the shaft. Gabe leans back against the sink as Tyson presses down onto him, taking him down as deep as he can manage. Gabe can feel him smirk around his dick as Tyson manages to take him fully, the bridge of his nose settling satisfyingly over Gabe’s skin. 

Tyson establishes a rhythm where he snakes his tongue around the underside of Gabe’s cock, pulls off just to lap at the head before taking him back down his throat, doing it over and over again until it drives Gabe completely insane. Gabe is spouting nonsense now, part English, part Swedish, part whatever guttural primordial troll language is embedded in his growls, and Tyson is reveling in every second. Tyson pulls off again to lave attention over the head with his tongue, hand wrapped around the shaft as he looks up at Gabe through his eyelashes, so strikingly pretty that all Gabe wants to do in that moment is come all over his face. 

He doesn’t though, cupping his hand around the back of Tyson’s neck to draw him back. Tyson looks up at him, breathless. 

“Are you tired already?” Tyson scoffs at him. “I’m older than you.” 

Gabe looks down at him and shakes his head, darting his tongue out over his lips. “Actually, babe, I really want to fuck you.” He says, with a slight smile. Tyson blinks up at him, and nods in a way that makes it look like he’s trying not to be too enthusiastic and is instead adorable. 

Gabe guides Tyson to his room by the hand. Tyson makes a quip about how he knows where Gabe’s room is, but he doesn’t move his hand away from where Gabe has his palm pressed over his wrist to feel their heartbeats sync. Tyson sheds his clothes as he goes, shrugging off his shirt, his shoes, his jeans into a trail through Gabe’s hallway. Tyson is taking a certain amount of glee in messing up Gabe’s house with his clothes, but Gabe notes, with a bit of satisfaction, that he wasn’t wearing underwear. 

Gabe pulls him into his room and into a kiss, catching a laugh out of the corner of his mouth as he lets them fall over the bed. 

Gabe takes the opportunity to explore Tyson’s body, kissing down his chest, delighting in the catches in Tyson’s breath he gets when he swirls a tongue over his nipple. He brushes his lips reverently over Tyson’s abs, darting quick kisses over the ridge of them. Tyson is beautiful, wonderful, masterful, and Gabe tells him so, murmuring it over his skin as he he reaches Tyson’s cock, licking a couple long stripes over it before he braces his thumbs at the brackets of Tyson’s thighs and pushes him up with one cheeky motion to swipe his tongue over Tyson’s hole. Tyson groans at the sensation, cursing at him as he threads his hand into Gabe’s hair to push him down deeper, and Gabe goes gladly. 

He opens Tyson up, ghosting his fingers over Tyson’s thighs to brush his thumb over Tyson’s hole, easing him in with the alternation of his tongue and fingers to get Tyson to relax under his efforts. Tyson, his mouth no longer occupied, won’t shut up, impatiently berating Gabe and begging him to just get on with it and fuck him. “Gabriel, c’mon this has gotta be some kind of fairy torture you have to—” Gabe cuts him off by sliding one finger, and then another, into Tyson, who almost chokes. 

Gabe arcs his fingers into him, crooking them slightly as he pushes in, searching and searching and—Tyson groans, digs his fingers more tightly into Gabe’s head. “More,” Tyson gasps. “More.” 

“Say please.” Gabe responds, voice too gruff for singsong but quite nearing the inflection. 

“Please.” Tyson grits out, and Gabe adds another finger. “Thank you!” Tyson barks at him, very clearly more like a “Fuck you,” and the sting of the expression coming from Tyson goes straight to Gabe’s dick. Gabe opens him up as expertly as he can, reveling in every sound he gets out of him as he does, until the slide is easy and Tyson is grasping at Gabe’s sheets with one hand and splaying his hand over Gabe’s head with another, biting off a moan with a snarl. 

He pulls himself off of Gabe’s fingers and pushes Gabe down onto the bed by his chest, eyes wild and ravenous. “I’m riding you, Landeskog.” Tyson says firmly, and Gabe’s dick twitches at the sound of it. He pauses, looking at Gabe. “Are we gonna need a condom?” 

“We got tested at the same time.” Gabe reminds him, at the physical a couple weeks ago, and slowly shakes his head. Tyson looks thoughtful, and nods to confirm. 

“There’s not any like…” He trails off and makes a weird gesture. “Some like magic fairy sex shit you could do?” Gabe raises an eyebrow, and thinks about it. 

“I can’t get you pregnant, if that’s what you’re asking.” Gabe, as a changeling, is basically a normal human with all of that stuff. He supposes there’s probably some kind of magic fairy sex shit that some more powerful trolls could do, but Gabe had no idea how to do any of that, and he wasn’t about to tell Tyson that in the middle of sex. Tyson colors a little, and Gabe sighs and directs him to the condoms in his bedside drawer. Tyson puts it on him, ignoring Gabe’s offer to help in favor of getting it done himself, and he applies a liberal amount of lube to them both.

“All right then, captain.” Tyson says, grin bright and toothy as he clambers back over Gabe, leaning over to capture his lips into a hungry, eager kiss. He positions himself to sink down on Gabe’s cock, Gabe arching his hips up to guide himself inside of Tyson’s hot, greedy hole. Tyson is still tight, despite Gabe’s efforts, and his breathing is heavy as he lowers himself onto Gabe inch by inch. Gabe starts to tell him to slow down, but Tyson just groans at him but the determined set of Tyson’s jaw means Gabe knows that’s a losing battle. 

When Tyson finally bottoms out, he looks endlessly pleased with himself, and Gabe groans longly and loudly until Tyson leans over to silence him with a kiss. He starts with a languid pace at first, testing the waters as he fucks himself over Gabe’s cock. One arm wraps around Gabe’s back to brace himself, the other once again digging into Gabe’s hair. 

“God, Tys, you’re beautiful.” Gabe says reverently, arching up into Tyson as they start to establish a rhythm. Tyson moans over Gabe’s ear, pressing misaimed kisses over Gabe’s jaw and down his neck as Gabe slides in and out of him. Tyson is wrecked, hair matted against his head, flushed red over every inch, straining around Gabe’s cock as he angles it to slam into his prostate. His eyes, half-glazed over, scan Gabe’s body in a way that Gabe’s never going to get sick of, and his eyes widen. 

The hand brushing through his hair pauses, and the movement of Tyson’s hips stalls as he stares awestruck at Gabe. Awestruck is often how Tyson looks at Gabe, and it’s definitely how Gabe is looking at Tyson now, but he’s still a little confused as to why they’ve stopped. “Can I touch them?” Tyson asks, eyes darting to Gabe’s head, and Gabe is completely confused. Tyson’s hand, he realizes, is ghosting over the part in his hair where one of his horns would be, if he wasn’t glamoured. Gabe nods, hesitantly, and Tyson gently runs his thumb over where the curl of his horn would be, and Gabe actually feels it. 

Tyson’s thumb brushes something, and there’s a tingling at the base of his scalp, and Gabe’s eyes widen. “You’re—” Tyson says, voice odd and tremulous. “You’re actually fucking golden.” Gabe scrambles, lifting one of his arms up, and sure enough, his skin is burnished gold. 

“Oh shit.” Gabe swears, trying to push himself up, Tyson still heavy on his hips. “My glamour’s failed.” 

“Glamour?” Tyson asks, one eyebrow raised. He’s still got one hand on Gabe’s horn, the other running up and down his chest to pet his abs again, as if he’s trying to test what parts of Gabe are real. 

“It’s like a body transformation, it’s like the only magic I know how to do.” Gabe explains, heating up under Tyson’s touch. It was more the only magic he was born with, the almost permanent spell that kept him human instead of a troll. “It’s never done this before, not during—”

“Are you saying my ass is so good I fucked you back into a proper troll?” Tyson smiles gleefully, his hand settling on Gabe’s chest. “That’s amazing, I love it.” 

Gabe is definitely blushing now, and he’s not even sure what that looks like right now, and he’s very aware that he’s still inside of Tyson, who has started to press down with his hips again. “Can you get up, and I can fix it?” Tyson raises an eyebrow at him. 

“Gabe, if you stop fucking me, I swear to God I’ll die.” Tyson gasps out overdramatically. “And if you stop fucking me to get rid of these—” Tyson runs a thumb down one of Gabe’s horns. “I won’t even haunt you.” 

“You like it?” Gabe asks, eyes wide.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Tyson shoots back, grinning at him wickedly. “I think you’re bigger now, inside me.” He declares, and he lifts himself up so just the head of Gabe’s cock catches on his rim, and sinks himself back down in a way that makes Gabe choke a little. “Yeah,” Tyson says dreamily, hand settling on one of Gabe’s horns. “You’re definitely a little bigger.” 

Gabe reaches up to grab him by the shoulders, careful not to scratch him with one of his newly emerged claws, and pulls him into a kiss. “You’re wonderful,” Gabe murmurs over his lips. “Did you know that?” 

“I did know that.” Tyson says cheekily, dragging a kiss over Gabe’s now pointed ear, before lifting himself back up and plunging down onto his cock smirking against his lips as Gabe’s breath catches again.

Tyson starts fucking himself against Gabe’s cock in earnest again, and Gabe matches his pace, pounding into him, one hand wrapped around Tyson’s hip and the other on his shoulder. He slams into Tyson, angling his cock to hammer Tyson’s prostate until he’s gasping, a gibbering mess on top of Gabe. Tyson’s hand tightens around his horn and he tenses, and suddenly he’s shooting his load between them, droplets of cum glistening over Gabe’s golden abs. The way Tyson tightens and tenses around him proves too much for Gabe, and suddenly he’s pulling Tyson close, dragging his teeth over his shoulder as he pumps his load into Tyson. 

Gabe pulls Tyson, boneless and exhausted, off of him by his hips, setting him down to curl up beside him. Tyson’s hands are all over him again as soon as he can get them, and Gabe leans over to kiss him again, more lightly this time. “God, I can’t believe you had a whole other, sexy troll form this whole time and I had no idea.” Tyson says, still trying to catch his breath. “That’s some magic fairy sex shit.”

Gabe just chuckles at him, and kisses him again until he falls asleep.

//

Gabe wakes up before Tyson, as per usual, and even before his alarm—he can hear the insistent tones of “Voulez-Vouz,” from the other room where he’d left his phone in his jeans. Tyson is still asleep next to him, drooling over one of his pillows. Gabe presses a light kiss to his curls, as careful not to wake him as possible. 

Gabe shrugs on some boxers, and the seams of them are even tighter against his thighs than usual. Gabe picks at the elastic and realizes: his hand is still burnished gold, skin rough and flaky like a stone, and probably more aptly described as a claw than a hand. 

He pads into the bathroom and immediately closes the door behind him with a shoulder on a determined path to the sink. The pads on his feet make soft noises against the bathroom tile, and the blunt talons on each finger clack over the counter as he leans over the sink to stare at himself in the mirror. 

Gabe doesn’t spend much time looking at himself as a troll. His glamour was so sturdy that he could go months or years without reapplying it—that was the point of a changeling, to hide in plain sight until they were discovered and killed, or their patron set them on the only family they’d ever known, and a glamour properly applied could last a lifetime without the changeling knowing. He’s all sharp teeth and cruel angles, wicked horns and bright, unnaturally blue eyes. 

Gabe meets his own gaze in the mirror, and tries not to flinch. This is the creature constantly threatening to bubble up under his skin, that roars when the Mountain King calls, that screams for blood when he’s out on the ice and he’s crosschecking some poor mortal’s head and his teammates and the refs are trying to pull him off and trying to remind him that he’s people. This is the monster that they all whisper about, when they talk about Colorado’s changeling captain—too far from human to ever play the game.

This is the monster that Tyson looked at with so much want, and fell asleep wrapped around. 

Gabe takes a deep breath and turns on the sink, as hot as he can make it. He plugs it up and waits until the sink is full and light steam rises from the basin. He stares once more at his own wild blue eyes glinting in the mirror before closing them tight. As if by rote, he plunges his hands into the sink, splashing the hot water into his face. When he opens his eyes, they’re still blue, but lighter now, and he’s human again. 

His hair is perfectly coiffed, his skin its normal tan, his teeth just teeth and far from fangs. He dries off using the towel on the rack, and wanders back into the bedroom, drying his hair as he goes. 

“Oh, hey.” Tyson says, staring up from where he’s tangled in Gabe’s sheets. His voice is still husky with sleep, blinking at him with wide eyes that are clearly drinking in Gabe in his underwear. “You got rid of the sexy troll form already?” Tyson asks, sounding a little disappointed. 

“What, is this not a sexy troll form?” Gabe licks his lips, and sets his jaw towards him. Tyson rolls his eyes, and Gabe gets a good view of how his blush goes down his next.

“You know what I mean.” Tyson says, shaking his head. He looks thoughtful. “How long do you think it’ll take me to get it out of you again?” He makes some grabbing motions in the air to motion Gabe towards him. “C’mon, I want to see how long it’ll take for me to blow you back.” 

Gabe raises an eyebrow. “You know we have morning skate soon?” He asks, and Tyson scoffs. 

“I’ll settle for you just blowing a load down my throat then, you fucking nerd.” 

And Gabe can’t really argue with that. 

//

Tyson doesn’t manage to break his glamour, but he does manage to knock over a lamp trying to suck Gabe’s soul out of his dick, and they end up clamoring through feeding Zoey and getting dressed to end up at the rink barely on-time. When they walk into the locker room together, Gabe several measures more disheveled than usual and Tyson wearing an oversized sweater and a pair of jeans that are a little too tall for him—even the pair he’d stolen from Jeff years ago—everyone’s eyes focus on them immediately. There’s an awkward silence before Josty tries to start a slow clap that is quickly stifled by Big Z whooping loudly and Mikko whistling.

Mikko claps him on the back as he reaches his stall, smiling brightly at him. “You told everyone, huh?” Gabe asks, and Mikko just grins. 

“I only tell half.” Mikko says with a shrug, and points a thumb towards Nate’s stall, where he and Tyson are trying to fend off the other Tyson’s lewd hand gestures. “Mack put it in group chat.” 

Gabe raises an eyebrow, and pads at his phone in his pocket, but Mikko shakes his head. “Secret group chat, for complaining about you and Tyson.” Gabe rolls his eyes and laughs. 

“I love you Rants, but you’re really bad at keeping secrets.” 

There’s an audible snort from a few stalls over, and Gabe looks up to see EJ, lacing his skates with unusual intensity. Before Gabe can say anything, EJ’s already rushing out onto the ice, brushing roughly past Big Z, who was clearly winding up to throw a jockstrap at Tyson. 

EJ is a livewire during drills, rushing up and down the ice like Herb Brooks himself is asking him what team he plays for. He’s uncommunicative, checking people brusquely and winding up slapshots at the net that are rattling towards Grubi. 

“Did we all forget one of his horses’ birthday parties again or something?” Nate asks, sliding next to Gabe as they watch EJ slam another puck that goes wide and clatters against the boards. Gabe shakes his head. 

“I put all of those on my phone calendar.” 

Gabe purses his lip, as EJ rings a shot off the post and swears loudly. 

“Well, it’s your turn to figure out what’s wrong with him.” Nate reminds him, pushing him towards EJ with one shoulder. Gabe sighs and puts on his best captain face without doing the one that EJ says makes him look like a cult leader. He’s skating towards EJ when he turns abruptly, like he’s ready to barrel his way to the other side of the ice, and they collide roughly, knocking each other on their asses. 

“Ten push-ups!” Nate yells helpfully from across the rink. Tyson, like a good boyfriend, or whatever he is now, points and laughs at them. 

Gabe groans and EJ rolls his eyes. “Whatever happened to seniority?!” He hisses, and Nate just makes a face at him until he gets himself into push-up position. “This is senior abuse.” 

“Better call LifeAlert before you fall and can’t get up.” Gabe chirps at him as he sets himself up for yet another round of punishment push-ups.

EJ stiffens as he shifts into a press, angling himself away from Gabe. He’s used to EJ being weird and rude as a general rule, but he doesn’t close off like this without a reason. 

Gabe does his first, professionally formed push-up, seeing EJ trying to rip through them as fast as he can. “Those push-ups are terrible, Johnson.” 

“Must be my shitty captain’s terrible example.” EJ laughs, mockingly. “They should trade him to Antarctica and me to the sun.” 

Gabe tightens up and wants to stop to just look at EJ—who is talking like he’s a step away from getting wine drunk and cyberbullying the entire organization again--but he’s still got more push-ups to do, and he gets through them stiffly. “What’s your damage, Erik?”

“Why don’t you ask your best friend Mikko?” He asks, before collapsing in a whiny heap on the ice. Gabe reaches his tenth push-up and rolls over to stare at him. 

“Is this because I hung up on you?” Gabe knew EJ was going to be a brat about that.

EJ pushes a light dusting of snow towards him, like a brat. “You hung up on me and never said anything and then I had to find out over text that you were just fingerblasting Tyson the whole time.” 

“Oh, I’ll be sure to play-by-play you the next time I fingerblast Tyson.”

“I’d trust you with my secrets.” EJ says petulantly. 

“No you wouldn’t,” Gabe scoffs. “I had to find out you moved when I went to your apartment and an old lady lived there.” 

“Oh c’mon, that was like a scavenger hunt, like geocaching. You like that kind of shit!” 

Gabe rolls his eyes. “You don’t know what geocaching is.” 

“Another secret you’re keeping from me then.” EJ says dramatically, and Gabe has the distinct urge to roll away from him. EJ is probably the most high-maintenance person Gabe knows, and that’s saying a lot given that he woke up this morning with Tyson Barrie. He’s pouting in his little pile, feigning as much hurt as he actually seems to feel, and Gabe is suddenly struck with the realization that for all he’s aged, EJ hasn’t quite changed much from when they first met. Erik Johnson will always be the twenty-something with a chip on his shoulder who checked Gabe during his first practice and flashed his gums at him until he smiled. He’ll always be the twelve year old who sold his teeth to talk to horses and learnt that tooth fairies weren’t what he thought they were and that debts were always collected eventually. He’ll always be the brittle boy made up of too-sharp angles and the weight of a franchise that wrapped their hopes around him like an anchor and left him to drown. He’ll always be the proud man that saw his team choose something between a child and a monster as their captain and dared everyone around them to say a single fucking word against him. 

For all the ways EJ’s changed, and how he hasn’t, he’ll always be Gabe’s best friend, and he deserves something for that. 

“You tell me your secrets, I’ll tell you mine. Deal?” Gabe ventures. 

“Like I’m dumb enough to make a deal with you.” EJ pauses. “You’ll tell me before Mikko though?” Gabe nods, and after EJ spends a few seconds without saying anything, tries to push himself back to his feet. “I think one of my horses is evil.” EJ finally says, and Gabe slumps back down. 

“Oh man,” Gabe says. “Which one?” 

“Biz Nasty.” 

“Yeah, that tracks.” Gabe shakes his head. “Did you need help with that or something or—” 

“Nah, he won’t hurt me. He’s just evil.” That doesn’t sound right to Gabe, but EJ looks like he wants to move on, so he does. 

“Tyson and I hooked up and he broke my glamour.” 

EJ’s eyes light up. “So you were—” He makes a weird hand gesture near his head. 

“Horns and all.” EJ bursts out with a loud, barking laugh. 

“I guess you can say he got you real horny, huh?” EJ ribs, and Gabe grimaces. 

“Can we go back to not talking? I liked that better.” Gabe mutters, trying to get himself up again, before Nate skates over to them, looking down at them dubiously. 

“Nobody actually kept count so you have to do it again.” Nate tells them solemnly, and they both groan. 

Later, after morning skate is done, EJ wanders over to his stall and hip checks him into the bench, which probably serves him right for dawdling getting dressed stealing glances at the marks he’d left down Tyson’s back and making faces at him from across the locker room every time someone mentioned them. 

“Hey, loser.” EJ greets, back to his normal amount of chipper bullying. “G wanted to talk to you.” Gabe glances at Sam’s stall, which is empty, and looks at EJ with an appropriate amount of disappointment. EJ just shrugs. “I was supposed to tell you earlier but I was still mad at you and wanted him to think you were a bad captain.” 

With that, EJ slings his jacket over his shoulder and saunters out of the locker room, winking at Tyson as he goes. “Have fun getting fingerblasted!” He calls out in a singsong voice. Tyson sputters, eyes widening towards Gabe, who just gives a shrug of his own. 

G seems long gone, and Tyson is suddenly very interested in the prospect of what Gabe can do with his fingers, so Gabe figures he’d better attend to that first. 

G’s a patient kid. He can wait until after the game.

//

His dad used to say that the rink was the greatest equalizer; that everyone was on the same level on the ice. 

It was a nice platitude to a boy with eyes too blue and teeth too sharp, who hit too hard and could let bruises sink under golden skin and disappear, but it was just that. As soon as Gabe got to Kitchener, saw boys like Jeff Skinner with blessings shimmering under their skates, or met boys in Colorado like Nate, holding his birthright heavy on his shoulders like the world, that he realized that wasn’t exactly true. 

On the ice, there were angels like them, and monsters like him, and then there was everyone else. 

In all of that, Gabe had no idea how to classify Connor McDavid. 

If Nate is a signal fire, McDavid is a beacon. Even G’s magic is steady, and flares up in bursts bright enough to sting Gabe sometimes. Seeing McDavid step out on the ice is almost painful, like staring at the sun, like looking at him too long will burn Gabe’s retinas clear out of his head. There’s magic over every inch of him, every hair and fingernail, emanating from his chest and brimming out in waves as he strides down the ice of the Pepsi Center with effortless ease. 

Gabe would almost think he was a fairy, if anything about it felt natural. 

There’s rumors, of course, both in the league and echoed in laughter on the wind. There’s a theory that there wasn’t always a Connor McDavid, that someone wished hard enough a star that he came crashing down to Earth face first, that all the magic in Edmonton pours into McDavid to make him. 

Growing up, Gabe knew a girl a couple of grades above him that had a sister that she didn’t always have, a girl with plait platinum hair and porcelain skin, a doll she’d loved so much she’d made a person out of her. 

He watches from the bench, desperate for a change as McDavid meets G, who looks exhausted, at the blueline and sidesteps him like it’s nothing, sinking in a shot on a feed from Draisaitl that makes Grubi look like he’s made of paper. 

Gabe wasn’t sure who it was that loved Connor McDavid enough to make him a real boy, but part of him hopes a whale might show up to swallow him whole. 

Most of the time, when Gabe gets on the ice, he feels a bit more settled. Equal or not, on the ice, he’s got a helmet on his head and a visor over his eyes, and he’s put on so many layers that there can’t be anything underneath but human. He’s got a pounding headache now, the forest fire of magic that is Connor McDavid burning at the corner of his eyes. 

Gabe plays hot, checking an Oiler near the boards with unexpected ferocity. The boy is smaller than he thinks, or maybe he’s bigger, as he lifts up in the air and the weight of him slams against the boards with an unpleasant sound. There’s barely a moment for Gabe to realize what’s happening when there’s a blur barreling into him, a nameless call-up from Bakersfield straight up tackling him across the ice. 

Gabe grits his teeth under his visor, catching a blow to his arm to push back at the scrub. “It’s a clean hit!” Gabe bites out, because it is. Shoulder to shoulder, no head contact, and the boy just wasn’t braced for it. 

The defenseman doesn’t hear, or elsewise just doesn’t listen. “That’s how you get off huh, you fucking monster? Tired of eating babies, you gotta go after teenagers?”

The words bristle against Gabe’s ears. He’s heard worse, of course, far worse, from Twitter eggs and sanctimonious talking heads who call every scrum Gabe gets in an “episode”—they’ll call this one that too, Gabe muses, file it away in a compilation video of the monster they call Colorado’s captain lose his shit. 

Gabe readies himself to throw a punch, to knock this guy clean off him, when they’re being pulled apart by the refs, Tyson coming up to bracket him on one side. Tyson says his name and puts a hand on his shoulder, drawing him backwards. His brow is furrowed and his eyes are the deepest brown, and he’s comfortingly devoid of any kind of magic. On the other side is McDavid, barking at the defenseman from under his breath as the refs escort the defenseman and Gabe to the penalty boxes for roughing. The kid Gabe hit is a little wobbly getting up, but he seems all right on the bench, and a little embarrassed to be the subject of so much attention. McDavid hisses at the boy to stay civil, tells him to keep that shit off the ice and away from his team. McDavid looks at Gabe, and Gabe manages to meet his eye for the brightness of his magic, and McDavid nods, as much explanation as he’s ever going to get. 

He pushes any thoughts of McDavid to the back of his head as he gets out the box and catches the puck from where Tyson throws it down the ice, racing towards the net at breakneck speed until he can chip it in between Koskinen’s legs, and ties it up. 

They win on a clutch goal from Kerfoot on Tyson’s pass that sends both of his roommates into a cuddle pile with Graves on the bench.

Gabe passes Tyson on his way back to the locker room so Tyson can be named first star, and the smile Tyson gives him is enough to wipe out any lasting annoyance from McDavid’s magic. Gabe has to resist the urge to kiss him right there on the ice in front of Lauren, Bernie, and national television, but he does manage to pull Tyson away in the tunnel and pin him against the wall by his hip. He runs a hand through Tyson’s soft curls, silences whatever quip Tyson has as he presses a kiss to sear in the corner of his mouth. 

//

Sam comes up to him after the interviews, only slightly tearing his attention away from staring at Tyson’s thighs as he and the other Tyson throw tape balls at each other from their stalls. Tyson curses and reddens every time he misses, which is often, and Gabe’s a couple of throws away from pressing up to Tyson from behind and whispering filthy things in his ear to make him even redder under the guise of providing coverfire. 

“You could have told me you were already doing something about Barries so I did not have to spend all night trying to call you to the mountain.” Sam says, apropos of nothing, tired looking grimace on his face. “Claiming him is a good idea, but you might be running out of time for that.” 

Gabe starts, staring at G with wide eyes. “What?” he asks, smile slipping from his face. “What are you talking about?”

Sam frowns at him deeply, exhaustion settling itself into his bones. “Do you not know? Or do you not want the help?” He glances over at Tyson, looking not at him but past him, towards the deepest parts of him where Gabe can look and only see Tyson. G scoffs and shakes his head, muttering something in French. “One thinks oneself to be invincible when one is young.” He says, in English, but it might as well be French. 

Gabe narrows his eyes at the defenseman, trying to find a clue in the swirling mass of magic that shrouded him. “Tyson’s never had any magic. No magic’s ever touched him.” 

Sam rolls his eyes. “Why do you think that?” He asks, accent getting thicker. “What do you think they’re all afraid of?” He runs a hand through his hair, shaking his head, and heads towards his stall, motioning for Gabe to follow him. 

He leans over his duffel to fish something out, and Gabe’s about to question him again when he pulls something out triumphantly. It’s a mostly used roll of Pride Tape, and not for the first time, Gabe wonders if this is an elaborate plan to own him again. Sam holds the roll up to one of the fluorescent lights, and there’s a little flare of magic, but nothing else happens. 

“You’d think after 600 years…” G grumbles, tapping the roll twice with his fingers, and pulling at the light with his other hand. Gabe blinks, and suddenly there’s a prism of light coming from the hole in the tape, sending flickering color emanating from the rainbows wrapped around it. “Seeing stone.” G proclaims. He throws it at Gabe, who barely manages to catch it. 

Gabe stares at him. “Look through it!” Sam commands impatiently.

“Are you a witch?” Gabe asks. “I feel like, as your captain, I should’ve known if you were a witch this whole time.” Sam just groans and gestures at him to look through the Seeing stone. Gabe sighs, sure that Josty’s about to hop out from behind his stall and tell him he just got owned again, but brings the roll of tape up to his eye to look at Sam. 

Sam looks about the same, slight, and dark. His skin is alabaster white, like fallen snow. His lips are bitten red, his ears resolve into tight points. There’s a light dusting of what looks like glitter—or pollen-over the bridge of his nose, over his shoulders, and ghosted around his delicate, sugar spun wings. 

“Holy shit!” Gabe says, almost dropping the Seeing stone, only barely catching it before it hits the ground. Gabe can feel curious eyes start to perk up around them. Sam’s eyes widen, and he snaps his fingers, and the noise of the locker room resolves into muffled silence. “How did you do that?!” Gabe asks, voice higher and squeakier than he wants it to be. 

“Practice.” Sam says, monotone. 

“You’re a tro—a fairy?” 

Sam shakes his head. “’M a Puck.” He says, with a little, mocking bow. He pauses. “Not that kind of puck.” He pauses again. “Don’t tell EJ. Or Bednar. Or anyone.” 

“Did someone send you?” Gabe asks, rubbing the back of his neck. He tries to remember what he knows from Shakespeare, or history. “Oberon, or whoever?”

Sam snorts. “No one sent me anywhere. Just felt like playing hockey, this time around.” He gives a little shrug, and looks over Gabe. “More and more of our kind seem to be doing it. Thought it was the fashion.”

Gabe thinks it over, his head reeling. “Was opera the fashion, before hockey?” 

Sam smiles, and he has way too many teeth. 

His smile slips into a frown, and he nudges Gabe by the shoulder, past the shimmering circle of light that Gabe realizes has suddenly surrounded them. “You should look at Barries. With the stone.” 

Gabe lets out a breath, and follows his gaze. Tyson doesn’t seem to notice anything amiss, joking with Nate on the bench. His laugh is magnified in the distorted gaze beyond G’s barrier, and Gabe takes a second to treasure the deep cut of his dimples as he smiles. G makes an impatient gesture, Gabe takes a deep breath, and looks. 

Tyson looks mostly normal, no magic surrounding him except for, Gabe notices with a certain amount of pride, a light dusting of magic Gabe recognizes as his own signature. He looks completely mundane, otherwise, except for a tiny sliver of something in his chest. Gabe twists the roll of tape between his fingers, tries to channel a little of his own magic into it to coax whatever it is into sight, and instantly he wishes he hadn’t. 

There’s something burrowing out from Tyson’s heart. There’s something malignant, corruptive, a dark pulsing magic that has taken a hold of the core of him, and Gabe can see it greedily eating away at his own and making it into a foul picture of itself. “What is—” Gabe chokes out, fingers nervously slipping around the Seeing stone. “What’s wrong with him?” 

“There’s a Claim on him. A long Deal. Selfish, stupid, evil.” Sam’s voice sounds like he’s trying to be detached, clinical, but something of his pity sneaks in. “More than years long. Decades.” 

“He made a Deal with someone, like—” Gabe glances towards EJ’s empty stall, but Sam shakes his head. 

“This is more than teeth and bone. S’was someone strong, someone powerful. I can’t tell who, exactly. And for it to go so long as it has…” Sam grimaces, and looks at Gabe. “The only person who could sell him like that is a parent.” 

Something nasty clicks in Gabe’s chest, and he growls. He swipes at G’s barrier with one hand, tearing it away like paper. Sam seems startled by the ferocity of it. Gabe pays him no mind, and without another thought he’s marching up to Tyson, pulling him into his arms. 

“Gabriel, what the hell are you—” Tyson starts, smile lapsing into confusion as Gabe pulls him into a tight embrace, nuzzling into his shoulder. Gabe lays light kisses over his collarbone, up to his neck, ignoring the surprised exclamations and catcalls from the rest of the team still in the locker room. He guides Tyson into a kiss by his chin, and presses their foreheads together, trying to take him in, every part of him. 

“Not that I don’t appreciate freaking out all our teammates by letting them know I’m getting my dick wet with the hottest guy in the room.” Tyson whispers, lacing his hand to squeeze Gabe’s palm reassuringly. Distantly, he can hear Nate’s indigence at having his conversation interrupted, and Big Z hollering. “But is there something I’m missing?” Gabe makes a soft noise. 

“G told me something.” Gabe admits, running his thumb in small circles over the back of Tyson’s hand. “We might have to call your dad.” 

Tyson makes a face at that so confused and disgusted that he has to convince Nate not to punch his captain in the face. 

//

Tyson’s not really acting like a man with a claim on his life, given with how concerned he is about what music Alexa is playing when they all herd around the laptop on his kitchen table. He’s bickering with Nate—who insisted on coming—about Pearl Jam while Sam stares curiously at the doodles on his white board. Gabe’s not entirely sure he understands the gravity of the situation.

“Tys, we should call him.” Gabe cuts in while Nate is making a very spirited defense for Childish Gambino. Tyson rolls his eyes. 

“Captain voice. Must be serious.” Tyson waves his hand around dismissively. “At ease, soldier.” He says to Sam, who is tracing over one of the letters in whatever song lyric Tyson had put up on the board with the marker. 

Tyson slips into the chair in front of the laptop, shoos away Nate from being in view of the camera, and sets up the call. 

“What, did they finally come to their senses and trade you?” Is the first thing that comes out of Len’s mouth, and the smile on Tyson’s face falters, and he looks tired. Gabe has to resist the urge to slam the laptop shut, or fly to Victoria and smack whatever smug look is permanently etched into the man’s face right off of him. 

“Yeah, dad, it’s crazy. Lemieux traded Crosby for me, said I was the new, better Crosby.” Tyson jokes. Len laughs obnoxiously. 

“Crosby must’ve taken a spill off that Russkie’s dick and turned completely braindead for that to happen.” Gabe takes a step forward, and Nate clasps a hand over his shoulder, shaking his head. 

Tyson takes a deep breath. “Look, dad.” He sounds hesitant now, and Gabe has known Tyson for a long time and he doesn’t think he’s ever heard him be hesitant. “I called because someone told me something, and I wanted to ask you—” 

“You and MacKinnon are finally getting gay married.” Len cuts in with a clap of his hand against whatever surface he’s next to. “You better get that pre-nup for when he finds out how much you eat when you actually live with some—” 

“Did you make a deal with a fairy, dad?” Tyson finally says, and Len shuts up. There a pause before he laughs again, and there’s an edge to it now. 

“Someone told you about that, huh?” Len says, dismissively. “It was nothing, I stretched it out, gave you forever for it—” 

“Who was it?” Tyson repeats. “Which fairy?” 

“God, I don’t know. Some one-eyed bitch, I don’t remember, it was so long ago.” 

“How long?” There’s an agonizing hitch in Tyson’s voice, and his eyes are wide, like he’s suddenly realizing how real all of this is. 

“Twenty-something years, plenty of time.” 

“Twenty-seven?” Tyson’s voice is cracking, and Sam looks at Gabe, and they both know what power the fae put into numbers.

“It’s nothing.” Len says again, like he’s trying to convince himself. “They didn’t even give up their end. I’m not actually rich or anything.” Tyson makes a broken, choked up sound coming rusty from the back of his throat, and slams the laptop shut, burying his face in his hands. Gabe and Nate step towards him at the same time, before Tyson lifts his head up, and they realize he’s laughing. 

“Well, fuck me!” Tyson curses, voice loud and erratic. “Isn’t that just my dad, Dogg?” Tyson asks, looking at Nate and waving his hand wildly in the air. “Sells his own son for a get rich quick scheme, and it didn’t even fucking work!” He sounds furious and miserable all at once, and Gabe is stricken. 

He moves over to Tyson in two strides, wraps an arm around his shoulders to let him rest his face in his chest. Gabe feels the wetness of tears soak into his shirt, and he realizes Tyson is crying. All these years of knowing him and every up and down and Gabe has never seen Tyson Barrie cry. 

“He doesn’t deserve you.” Gabe says, pressing a soft kiss into Tyson’s curls. “Any parent who would give up a child for a deal. He’d never deserve you.” 

“It’s not about what I deserve.” Tyson murmurs. “He’s all I’ve got.” 

“No, he’s not.” Gabe tells him, running a hand through his hair. He nudges a shoulder towards Nate, ashen white and furious, and G trying to calm him. “You’ve got us.” He lifts Tyson’s chin to look him in the eye, brush the tears off his eyelash with one thumb. “You’ve got me.” 

Tyson takes a deep, watery breath. “I don’t want to go anywhere.” He admits, wrapping an arm around Gabe’s back to pull him closer. “I don’t want to have to leave.” 

“You don’t have to go anywhere!” Nate suddenly comes in, jaw set and determined. Tyson looks at Gabe, who nods. 

“We’ll figure it out. We’re not letting anyone take you.” Gabe says, as firmly as he can. 

“Captain voice.” Tyson says, mustering a weak, but genuine laugh. 

“Must be serious.” Gabe responds.

//

“Do you really have no idea who it is?” Nate asks, again. 

G shrugs. “I don’t know every Court. Could be cyclops, could be Likho, could be anybody.” He admits. For the first time, Gabe curses for the fact that he doesn’t know any. 

“Could be Mike Wazowski.” Tyson says, dryly. They all stare at him. “What? Could be.” 

They’re gathered around the table again, this time around the white board they’ve taken from the wall to write down what they know, which admittedly isn’t a lot. Tyson passes a round of La Croix around the table. Gabe personally wouldn’t begrudge him for wanting something stronger, but they’ve got an early flight in the morning to Vancouver, and it wouldn’t help anything to show up hungover. 

“You said I was claiming him.” Gabe chimes in. Tyson makes a weird face at Nate. “Could we just keep doing whatever that is?” 

Sam frowns. “You’re already doing it.” He glances at where Tyson’s hand is laced with his over the top of the table. “But it doesn’t matter if we don’t know who you’re claiming him from.”

“I’m not something to be claimed. I’m not like, baggage.” Tyson grumbles, and Gabe squeezes his hand. 

“If I’m claiming you, you’re claiming me.” He explains softly. Now Nate makes a face. 

“If Len’s going to be useless, how do we figure out who he made the deal with?” Nate asks Sam, barreling past any flirting his best friend and his captain would be doing. Sam considers. 

“Does anybody know a witch?” 

Tyson’s eyes light up. “Josty!” Gabe’s eyebrows shoot up to his forehead.

“Josty’s a witch?” He asks. “I swear if anyone else on this team turns out to be a secret witch without me knowing, I—” 

“No,” Tyson explains, meeting eyes with Nate, who seems to be slowly realizing something himself. “I mean, kind of, but he’s really shitty at it. His mom’s the actual witch.” 

“Yeah,” Nate chimes in. “He got really drunk at Tys’ Christmas party and told us after he tried to make Comph tell the truth in Truth or Dare and threw up on his shoes instead.” Gabe furrows his brow. 

“Where was I during this?” 

“You were doing the Ken parts for EJ during ‘Barbie Girl.’” Tyson reminds him, with a scoffing laugh.

“Oh yeah,” Gabe remembers. That was when EJ took his shirt off and started grinding up on Sam. He looks at Sam, who is suspiciously red, and obviously remembers that too. “I rocked that.” Gabe asserts. Tyson claps his back sympathetically. 

“Sure, Ken.” Tyson shakes his head, and reaches for his phone. “Anyway, yeah, we should call him.” He seems cheerful now, hopeful. “I knew having another Tyson around would be useful eventually.” 

Josty answers the Facetime flushed, curls matted to his forehead with sweat, and shirtless. “Dude, did we catch you jacking off?” Tyson asks, with a snort. 

“Nope.” Comes another voice, and JT pushes himself into the screen, also shirtless and glaring annoyedly. “What the fuck do you all want?” 

Gabe doesn’t have time to unpack all of that, so he asserts himself into the frame. “Jost, we need your mom’s number.” He puts on his captain voice again and Tyson sort of tenses next to him. Josty makes a weird, strangled noise. 

“Why do you want to call my mom?” Josty asks, clearly confused. “Am I in trouble?” 

“Nah,” Tyson says. “This Tyson’s in trouble.”

It takes them a little while to explain everything, or as much as Tyson is comfortable explaining, before Josty decides it’s easier to arrange something with his mom himself. He gets back to them not long after, and tells them she’ll meet them before their game in Edmonton, in four days. 

“Four days.” Gabe says, after everything’s settled enough that they can let Nate take Sam home. 

“Think you can keep the fairies off my ass until then?” Tyson asks, cheekily. 

“If you don’t mind one fairy on your ass, I can keep it occupied.” Gabe shoots back, and Tyson presses a laugh over Gabe’s lips. 

“I’d rather keep your ass occupied tonight, actually.” He says, one hand snaking down to slip down under Gabe’s waistband and Gabe can’t argue with that. 

//

Tyson steers Gabe into his room by his shoulders, pushing him onto the bed with one hand. “Take off your clothes, Big Head.” He commands, and Gabe raises an eyebrow from where he’s pulling at the hem of his shirt. 

“Are you really calling me Big Head during sex?” 

Tyson rolls his eyes. “I’m calling you Big Head before sex.” 

“Oh, that’s high level foreplay. You should write a book.” 

Tyson throws his shirt at him, and Gabe barely just ducks it. 

Gabe slips off his own shirt, and takes a moment to admire the taut lines of Tyson’s back and the curve of his biceps as he bends down to throw off his shoes and take off his jeans. Tyson catches him staring, and sighs dramatically. 

“Can you stop ogling me and take your pants off already or do I have to do it for you?” Gabe, with little deliberation, decides to keep staring. 

Tyson makes an exasperated noise and tackles him to pin him to bed between his arms. He captures Gabe’s lips into a kiss, deep and exacting. He mines the seam of Gabe’s lip, extracting every sound he can. He lathes kisses down over his jaw, dragging his teeth down to suck a bruise into the skin above his collarbone. At the same time, his hands fiddle with the button of Gabe’s jeans and underwear, pulling them off as deftly as he can manage. 

Tyson doesn’t touch his cock, instead moving to press against Gabe’s thighs as he moves down between them. He looks at Gabe through his eyelashes, and with one determined move, lifts one of Gabe’s legs over his shoulders and presses his tongue over Gabe’s hole. Gabe’s breath catches, and Tyson is relentless. Gabe marvels a little, again, over how good Tyson is at using his mouth when he’s not using it to talk so much. 

Except, he is talking. 

He’s murmuring, over and over again, under his breath, some combination of insult and praise that Gabe can barely understand for how he’s pulsing his tongue over Gabe’s hole, stretching him open from one thigh with his fingers.

One of Gabe’s hands wanders to push the back of Tyson’s head gently but insistently pressing him down. Tyson plunges his tongue into Gabe, swirls it with as much flourish as he puts on a slapshot, and Gabe’s vision goes white hot, his nails digging into the sheets, and Tyson—

“Boo-ya!” Tyson exclaims, the heat of his tongue drawing away from Gabe. Gabe opens his eyes and looks down at him, over the shimmering gold of his own chest, and he realizes, with a little more glee than he would normally expect, that his glamour has broken again. “I didn’t even have to start fucking you.” He says smugly, and then his eyes light up. “Would it be like, dangerous if you sucked my dick right now? Do you have fangs or whatever?” 

Once again, Gabe is taken aback by how into all this Tyson is. “I’ve never sucked a dick like this.” Gabe says, truthfully. Tyson looks even more smug at that, if anything. Honestly, he very much does have fangs, and he’s designed pretty exclusively for the purpose of Hulking out one night and eating his human family for fun, but at this point Gabe isn’t sure whether that would be a turn on for Tyson or not, or which one he wants to be. Instead, he says, “But I can deal with the fangs,” and pulls Tyson down onto the bed. 

He lays one wrist down over Tyson’s hip to prop himself up, and wraps his hand around Tyson’s cock, gingerly avoiding contact with his claws. He pumps his hand up and down twice, drawing stuttered breaths from Tyson. He opens up his palm and licks up from the base of Tyson’s cock, swirling his tongue over the head, and taking some satisfaction in the curses he extracts from him. 

He takes Tyson into his mouth carefully, luxuriantly, letting Tyson get used to him before he looks up to meet his eyes. Tyson’s eyes are dark, scraping his teeth over his bottom lip in anticipation. Gabe turns on a steady pace, breathing through his nose, before sinking down and taking Tyson down his throat entirely. 

Tyson gasps, roots his hands in Gabe’s hair to grip against his horns. He babbles, about fairies, about fairness, about how beautiful Gabe is, and Gabe can’t help but preen—mouth wrapped around Tyson’s dick as he is. He lays his tongue as constant pressure over the underside of Tyson’s dick, drawing off to lap at the head, and Tyson sputters. 

“Okay, okay, I need to be inside you. I need to be fucking you like, yesterday.” Tyson says, and Gabe draws off, wiping his mouth with his arm. 

“You were fucking me yesterday.” Gabe reminds him, voice a little hoarse. “Or well, I was fucking you.”

Tyson groans at him, and pounces. He pins Gabe with surprising weight, and Gabe suddenly remembers how good Tyson is at wrestling, and that thought goes straight to his dick. Gabe manages to get his arm free and grab the half-empty bottle of lube sitting on the bedside table and throws it at him. Tyson, who was straddling his hips staring at him again, barely manages to catch it. 

He looks at Gabe again, in between spreading a healthy amount of lube over his palm. “None of this claim shit means I can get you pregnant, right?” He asks. 

Gabe smirks at him, and shrugs a little. “I don’t know, probably not.” Tyson makes an exasperated noise, and slaps his lube covered hand over Gabe’s thigh. In revenge, maybe, he crooks his thumb over the rim of Gabe’s hole before pressing it in, looking immensely satisfied at the gasp that draws out of him. 

He pushes his thumb into Gabe, never breaking eye contact as he expertly switches fingers, and adds another. Tyson’s other hand snakes its way back up to play with Gabe’s horns again, running over them appreciatively before ghosting down the side of his jaw to rest at his chin. Almost instinctively, Gabe takes Tyson’s fingers into his mouth, licking and lapping at them inbetween groans as Tyson bucks his fingers into him. Gabe has always appreciated Tyson’s hands, and having them in him at both ends is combining more than one of his fantasies right now. 

Tyson switches hands to grab a little more lube, and Gabe gasps as he plunges three fingers inside of him. Tyson has a determined look in his eye as he fucks Gabe open with his fingers, twisting and crooking them inside him. He brushes up against something inside of Gabe, and he bucks against the sheets, there’s a pulse of pleasure in waves over his skin, and Tyson leans over to capture his mouth in a kiss. 

“You’re literally shimmering.” Tyson whispers, and Gabe lifts up his hand to see the vestiges of it, the rolling wave of glittery gold over his skin. “That’s so fucking Twilight.” Tyson says, impossibly fond. 

“Tys.” Gabe warns, voice low, claws scraping against the bedsheets. “Stop being a nerd and fuck me.” 

“Aye, aye, captain.” Tyson gives him a sloppy, mocking salute, strokes himself once, and guides the head of his dick to press against Gabe’s hole. 

Gabe groans as Tyson sinks into him, sliding in easy for all the preparation. He keeps one hand gripped around Gabe’s hip, the other braced on one of Gabe’s horns as he leans down to kiss Gabe again. He gives Gabe a long, fluttering kiss as he starts to fuck into Gabe. He kisses down Gabe’s neck and over his chest, latching his mouth over a nipple, and then the other, lapping at them in time with his thrusts. Gabe tries to move one hand to wrap around his cock, but Tyson swats him away, tells him he has it. Tyson wraps his own hand around him to jack him off, leaning down to sandwich Gabe’s cock between their abs. Gabe is faced the pressure of Tyson against his dick and Tyson bucking up against his prostate, mouthing over his chest, goading him, teasing him. 

“Do it, Gabriel.” Tyson says, voice deep and heavy. “Come for me.” He commands, so Gabe does, spilling over the grip of Tyson’s hand and letting his come pool over his stomach. 

Gabe lets him take control, then lets himself relax against his comforter as Tyson fucks him pliant and boneless. Tyson’s breathing starts to quicken. his breath ragged as he slams into Gabe, both hands moving up to grip Gabe’s horns. “Gabe.” Tyson says his name, again, meeting his eye to ask permission. Gabe nods, angling up for a kiss, and Tyson groans into his mouth as he makes one final push into him before tensing, filling him up. 

They kiss for a little longer before Tyson slumps and rolls over Gabe, arm laying over the sticky mess on Gabe’s stomach. He runs his fingers through the still drying pool of come on Gabe’s stomach, and slowly brings it to his lips to lap at his palm. 

“Aw,” Tyson says, still a little hoarse. “I thought it’d be sweeter.” 

“Sorry my magic jizz doesn’t taste like Caramilk, Four.” Gabe shoots back, with a laugh. 

“Guess you can’t be that perfect.” Tyson admits with a sigh, wrapping one arm around Gabe’s shoulders to stroke at his horns again. “Thanks.” He says, the slightest of stings. 

Gabe raises an eyebrow. “For not being perfect?” 

Tyson chuckles. “Well, yeah. Better for my self-esteem. But for letting me take control.” He pauses, voice a little quiet. “I kind of needed it.” 

“Yeah, it was a big sacrifice for me.” Gabe jokes. Tyson smiles, but it falters, just a bit. 

“Four days.” He says again. “We haven’t even been together for four days and you’re already trying to save my soul. Just imagine what we’ll be like in a week.” 

Gabe turns to look at him. He’s trying to be nonchalant, but Gabe has known Tyson long enough to figure out when he’s really worried about something. “We’ve been together for way longer than four days. It’s just taken us this long to us to get our act together.” 

Tyson smiles a little more genuinely at that. “Is this what it’s like to have my act together?” 

“I’ll take you either way.” Gabe says, and kisses him. 

Tyson kisses back, soft and careful. He draws back after a few seconds, but keeps their foreheads pressed together. “Do you really think Josty’s mom will help me?” 

Gabe snorts a little. “Everyone you’ve ever met has been willing to do anything for you.” He says, and he means it. Even if they hadn’t been…whatever they were, Gabe would be doing this for Tyson. Gabe would do anything Tyson needed him to. 

“Tell that to my dad.” Tyson muses. 

Gabe sighs, and laces their fingers together. He thinks about his family, across a sea, and the way he was born. “That’s the thing about parents. Sometimes they don’t ever really get to meet you.” 

There’s a pause, as if Tyson’s trying to work out his words. Gabe squeezes his hand to reassure him. “Have you ever met them? Your troll parents, I guess?” 

Gabe frowns, and nods. “I’ve met her. The troll who gave me up. She comes by every couple of years and tries to get me to come back with her.” He remembers the first time she came, showing up at his billet house in Kitchener, far away from his parents’ built in protections and charms. She’d called him names he’d never heard and scared the shit out of Jeff.

“Did you ever think about it?” 

Gabe shrugs a little. “A little bit, sometimes.” When he was a teenager, far from home, trying to do what he loved when he was built to devour what he loved whole. He sets his jaw, and looks Tyson in the eye, puts a hand over his heart. Deep inside, where the magic sat, his claim and whoever else thought they had a hold of him were duking it out for Tyson’s heart. “I always tell her to fuck off.” 

Tyson smiles, and wraps around him closer. “You better still look like this in the morning.” He whispers. 

“We have to catch a plane in the morning.” Gabe reminds him. 

“Don’t care.” Tyson says, kissing Gabe again. “I want to see you in the shower.”

//

Gabe wakes up on a plane. 

Mikko’s messing with his luggage in the overhead compartment next to him, and there’s the mechanized beeping of the baggage movers on the tarmac.

“There’s a storm coming.” Nemo says in Swedish, and for some reason he’s craning over to peer through Gabe’s window. 

Gabe swats at his beard, and Nemo just stares at him.

“Van City!” Josty yells, rushing down the aisle, and Gabe manages to catch Tyson giving him a high five as he passes. Gabe catches an eye and raises an eyebrow. 

“Van City.” Tyson mouths, shrugging, as a jetlagged Nate starts to literally push him out of the plane so they can get to the hotel faster. 

As the leave the airport, Gabe checks the skyline, to see the thick gray clouds encircling the city start to close in.

//

The game is a late afternoon weekend one on the schedule, so there’s a lot of kids there. Gabe flips a puck to a sweet little girl with a burgundy and blue bow in her hair, and winks at Pettersson from where he, Boeser, and Stetcher are staring at him from their side of the ice. 

“Charming twinks?” EJ asks, dusting him a little as he slides up. 

“You’re one to talk.” Gabe chirps back, and dusts him even more more when he pushes off. 

The game is quick, and chippier than Gabe expected for a Canucks game. Pettersson keeps staring at him, but in a different way than how people normally stare at him: like he wants to take him apart piece by piece and see how he ticks. Markstrom is more of a brick wall than they ever expected, and he’s stonewalled three of Josty’s tries by the end of the first. 

Pettersson undresses EJ off the faceoff in the opening minute of the second and gets a feed to Boeser that sails right in past Grubi’s blocker. Gabe grabs a point when Nate ties it up on the power play after Kerf gets a welcome back to Vancouver by getting highsticked by a Frenchman. Their relief at having tied it quickly evaporates when Roussel gets it coming out of the box and scores on the breakaway. 

As a game goes on, the walls of the stadium roll with thunder as the storm moves in. 

One of the defensemen slashes Josty so hard that his stick breaks, but the linesmen decide to miss more calls than his Skype connection and Josty’s retaliatory crosscheck earns him a stint in the box. As good a boyfriend as he is, Sam does a spin move and JT manages to pull a shortie out of thin air and tie them up, but that doesn’t stop Josty from coming to the bench fuming when Markstrom gloves another of his shots. 

Gabe pulls him aside in the locker room during the second intermission, after he chucks his gloves at the equipment guy’s face and storms in. “Hey, calm down, Millie Bobby Brown.” He says, putting a hand on his shoulder. 

Josty frowns, slumping against the bench. “It’s just—it wasn’t supposed to be this hard.” 

Gabe looks at him, as seriously as he can. “It’s not supposed to be easy.” Gabe says. “The NHL is the farthest thing from easy, even for guys like us.” He pauses. “Especially for guys like us.” 

“What am I supposed to do, then?” 

Gabe crosses his arms, and puts a set to his jaw. “Just fucking do it, and shove it up the ass of anyone who said you couldn’t.” 

Josty smiles at that, and as soon as they get out there for the third, manages to cause a turnover that gets the puck to Gravy for a slapshot that whistles into the empty net with a satisfying clunk. He doesn’t show up on the score sheet, but he smiles wider than anybody in the pile. 

As they’re leaving, one of the staff informs them their plane to Edmonton is grounded because of the storm, and they’ll leave in the morning.

Tyson sneaks into his hotel room later that night, and they get to test out what hotel showers are like. 

It’s a good night, all things considered, and Gabe holds Tyson tightly as they fall asleep. 

// 

Gabe wakes up on a plane. 

“There’s a storm coming,” Nemo says. 

“Another one?” Gabe says, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Fuck climate change.” Edmonton, he notes, is warmer than he thought. 

Nemo nods sagely. 

“Van City!” Josty yells, rushing down the aisle, and Gabe rolls his eyes. He meets eyes with Tyson, who shrugs at him, despite Nate pushing him off the plane again. Tysons do appreciate their bad jokes, huh? 

There’s grey clouds hovering over the city. 

// 

It’s not until he gets to the arena that Gabe realizes they are, in fact, still in Vancouver. There’s the blue and green, there’s the little girl with the bow—she has a sign, Gabe notices, but there’s something up with the glass or the marker she uses, because he can’t read it, though he flips her a puck anyway. Pettersson is still staring at him creepily from across the ice. 

“Charming twinks?” EJ asks, sliding up to him. Gabe doesn’t respond. “Something wrong, el capitan?” 

“Do I have something in my teeth?” Gabe asks him, showing his teeth at him. “Pettersson won’t stop staring at me.” 

“I wouldn’t know,” EJ says. “I don’t have those.” He flashes Gabe a gummy smile. Gabe swats at his shoulder. 

“I feel like I’ve already done this.” He confides. EJ smiles a little wider.

“All these games blending together, huh?” EJ claps Gabe on the back and laughs. “Means you’re finally getting old.” 

Maybe he is getting older, because Gabe feels like he’s missing a half step during the game. Josty’s tries keep getting stalled, and halfway through the first he’s out of position during the faceoff and Hutton scores off of Pettersson’s pass. Gabe misses a pass during the power play from Nate that Mikko scoops up and puts into the net, Roussel scores out of the box, and Tyson bumps his shoulder in the locker room during intermission. 

“Hey, you okay? Dogg says you’re being weird.” Gabe lets his shoulder rest against Tyson’s for a second, grounding himself in the contact. 

“Do you ever feel like you’re repeating yourself?” Gabe asks, Tyson scrunches his face up. 

“That’s more quitter talk than I’ve ever heard from you, Landeskog.” Tyson says, pressing a hand over his shoulder. “Keep it up and Dogg’ll organize a coup.” 

Gabe shakes his head, and tries to shake it off. 

During the second, thunder starts shaking the walls of the stadium. Josty’s stick blows up on a slash, and he gets called for the crosscheck, again. It’s a little disappointing. He’s expecting JT to score shorthanded, but instead Barbs fumbles the puck at the blueline and Horvat gets a breakaway that Grubi barely stops. He gets a deflection goal off an attempt from Tyson, and tries not to kiss him during the celly. 

Josty storms into the locker room like a brat again, and Gabe lets him go. 

“You not going to talk to him?” Mikko asks, sounding genuinely surprised.

“I tried last time.” Gabe shakes his head. “If he’s going to keep acting like this there’s not much I can do.” 

“You should go.” Mikko admonishes, hip checking Gabe a little. “Be good captain.” 

Gabe sighs, and draws Josty to the side. “I told you, it’s not going to be easy—” 

“Yeah, you’d think so.” Josty grumbles. “I’m gonna go dunk my head in the shower.” He says, pushing himself off the bench. Gabe watches his go with wide eyes, and shakes his head again. 

Boeser scores, and scores again on the empty net. Gabe groans at the hashmarks, waiting for the hats to fall. 

“What you talking about?” Big Z asks, from next to him. “He only had two.” He scoffs, and kicks at the ice. “Only two.” 

Gabe rubs his temples under his helmet, and slinks off the ice with the rest of them when the clock runs out. Josty breaks his stick over the boards, and none of them really blame him. 

Tyson shows up at his hotel room again, intent on trying out his troll form in the hotel showers. 

“I really feel like we’ve done this before.” Gabe says.

“Not in a hotel shower.” Tyson says, and Gabe lets him pull him in. 

// 

Gabe wakes up on a plane. 

“There’s a storm—” 

“Oh, Jesus Christ!” Gabe growls, almost knocking Nemo over as he stands up. “Where’s G?” He calls out to EJ, who is adjusting his headphones as he’s availing finally having data for whatever horse game he’s playing on his phone. EJ raises an eyebrow at him. 

“He’s still injured, numbnuts.” EJ says, like it’s obvious, like G has supposedly been out with some injury and Gabe didn’t know it. 

“Van City!” Josty yells, and Gabe groans, pressing his forehead against the side of the plane. 

“Same, buddy.” Nemo says, clapping him on the back. 

//

G, apparently, is very much not on this trip, and was never supposed to be on this trip. Which is pretty fucking convenient, considering he was on the first one, and somewhere in-between then and now they’d all stumbled into some kind of paradox time fuckery that Gabe didn’t know enough about science or magic to figure out. 

He tries calling him, but something in the magic is messing up his phone, making it a mess of icons and blurred words rearranging themselves every time he tries to read them. 

He shows up to the arena, he sits down in Bednar’s office, Nate, Tyson and EJ flanking him for moral support, and he says: “A fairy put us in a time loop, and I think they stole G.” 

“Well, that’s not good.” Jared says, implacably. He looks at Nate, who shrugs. Tyson stares at Gabe, eyes wide, and EJ raises an eyebrow to his hairline. 

“A fairy is doing what with G now? Who? Where?” EJ is gripping the arm of his chair tightly, and his voice is almost accusatory. 

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” Gabe grumbles. 

“Okay.” Jared says, patiently. “Did you mess with a fairy somehow? Do something you shouldn’t?” 

“What?” Gabe starts. “Why me? G’s the one who got kidnapped!” 

“You’re the only one who noticed, dude.” Nate reminds him. “That probably means you’re the target.” 

“Do you think it has something to do with…” Tyson trails off, and gestures to himself. Gabe shakes his head. 

“G’s got the most magic out of any of us, whatever it is could be trying to use him or—” 

“Sorry,” EJ interrupts. “Since when did G have any magic?” 

Bednar presses his thumbs into his temples and sighs. “All right.” He says. “Okay. Let me make some calls, ask around, and I’ll get back to you. We’ll fix this.”

“You better.” EJ grumbles. 

// 

Between how distracted everyone is and EJ coming out of the gate like a wrecking ball with the knowledge that his rookie is not a Quebecois twenty year old who barely knows how to drive and instead a centuries old fairy who is very missing and barely knows how to drive. 

They trip over each other and turn over the puck, EJ slamming haphazard slapshot after slapshot at the net. One of them goes in, but most of them don’t. 

The Canucks get more lucky. 

EJ picks a fight with Rous and mouths off to the refs enough to get ejected, and the rest of the game goes by in a haze. 

“We’ll get them next time.” Gabe overhears Kerf say on their way out. 

“We gotta quit dreamin’, bud.” Josty says, and Gabe swears he looks at him when he says it. 

// 

Before he knows it, Gabe is in a hotel with Tyson, staring at his phone and the door in equal measure, waiting for Bednar to say something other than how the storm is messing with trying to get anything done. Outside, rain buffets the balcony, and Tyson sinks into bed next to him with an audible plop. 

“So it normally switches over when you fall asleep?” Tyson asks, resting his head on Gabe’s thigh, Gabe’s hand nestled in his curls. Gabe nods slowly. “So what happens if you don’t fall asleep?” He turns his head a little to press a kiss against Gabe’s inner thigh. “I could keep you occupied. I’ve got a few ideas.” 

Gabe shifts up a little to get his hands on the waistband of his shorts, but Tyson swats it away. “Not that. You get too sleepy after sex cause you’re such a nerd.” 

“Maybe you just tire me out.” Gabe teases. Tyson sticks his tongue out at him. 

He sits up to sit against the headboard with Gabe, sidling their shoulders together. “Did I ever tell you about Greta?” 

Gabe cocks his head at him, something impossibly fond fluttering in his chest. “No, who’s Greta? Is she an ex?” 

Tyson scoffs indignantly. “No, Landeskog. She’s a goat.”

Gabe stays up with Tyson until the early morning, listening to him tell wild stories about his grandparents and the BC boys and Biznasty. Gabe tells him his own stories, about his friends in Sweden and his time in Kitchener and fairies he’d met on the street who assumed he’d know things. 

He doesn’t know when he falls asleep, Tyson pressed up against his side, but apparently he does. 

// 

Gabe wakes up on a plane. 

“There’s a—” 

“Storm coming,” Gabe says, plaintively. “I know, Nemo. I know.” 

// 

Gabe starts to lose track of how many times he plays this game. 

Sometimes, he flips a puck to the little girl with the bow and the unreadable sign. Sometimes, he chooses differently, finds some teenagers or a little old lady in a Canucks jersey who kind of looks like she could be a witch. 

Sometimes he scores, sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes they shutout the Canucks, sometimes they shut them out. He’s getting real sick of the Canucks goal song. 

Once, he tries feeding everything to Josty until he gets a hat trick. Once, he fakes sick and gets himself scratched for the game, sneaking out of the press box to skulk around with the Seeing Stone trying to find anything in this arena that might be doing it, but instead he finds a huge metal wall separating the locker rooms. Once, he gets ejected going right up to Pettersson and warm-ups and shaking him to ask him why he won’t stop fucking staring and Brock Boeser tackles him across the ice and starts a line brawl. 

Once, he tries convincing the team that he had a prophetic dream that meant they had to go right back to Denver. 

“If your dreams tell the future, why didn’t they tell you not to wear those shoes?” Compher chirps, and that’s the end of that. 

Sometimes he tells Tyson, sometimes he doesn’t. EJ’s more of a crapshoot, depending on how much he tells him. Sometimes Nate joins them trying to stay up, but more often than not it’s him and Tyson, trying to see if one day the sun will rise. 

“You know, it’s weird that this is happening to you.” Tyson says, one night. They’ve got a big bucket of popcorn and they’re watching the Groundhog Day musical bootleg on Tyson’s laptop, because Gabe is getting really tired of watching the original Groundhog Day. 

“How do you figure?” Gabe asks, picking up a piece of popcorn that had gotten caught on Tyson’s shirt and, with no hesitation, popping it in his mouth. Tyson makes a little face, but Gabe has lived this day so many times he knows a little popcorn won’t hurt him. 

“Josty knows a little more about magic than you, right? Cause his mom’s a witch?” 

Gabe considers this, and his eyes widen. He tries to think about the loops, how many times he’s done this, and how many times he’s actually told Josty, and he can’t think of any. Josty’s so tied up in the game, in his frustration, in storming off in the locker room. “I guess I’ve never thought about it. He could definitely know something.” 

Tyson beams at him, bright and self-satisfied at his own good ideas, and Gabe grabs him by the shoulders to kiss it off him. 

// 

Gabe wakes up on a plane. 

The first thing he does is barrel past Mikko to Josty, who is in the middle of jumping up from his seat. 

“Sup, captain?” Josty asks, looking at him quizzically. 

“Do you know anything about repeating time?” Gabe asks, breathless. Josty frowns at him, and cocks his head. 

“You’re not repeating time.” Josty smiles at him, brushing his knuckles against his shoulder. “You’re dreaming, bro.” Gabe blinks. 

With that, Josty bursts up from his seat. “Van City!” He yells, as he’s scripted, and runs down the aisleway. 

// 

Suddenly, Gabe is in the arena, on his skates, coming out for warm-ups. There’s the little girl with the bow in her hair, and Gabe is struck again with the fact that he can’t read her sign. 

He can’t read any of the signs, or any of the banners, or any of the names on people’s backs. 

He thought he’d gotten used to the fans here, gotten used to their faces, but then he realizes that’s because he’s seen them all before. One of the girls at the glass is his neighbor’s daughter, and there’s a family that ran the pastry shop he went to in Stockholm as a kid. 

Soda passes him by on the ice. 

“Say something in Swedish.” Gabe says, and it comes out in English. 

“You all right, Gabe?” Soda asks, genuinely concerned, and that comes out in English too. 

// 

He, Tyson, and Josty are in his hotel room. Josty has an armful of candles. “I probably don’t know how to do this in real life.” Josty notes, setting the candles in a circle. “I know some things about magic, but I probably know a little more, because that’s what you think I know. Thanks for believing in me, dude.” Josty beams at him, and Gabe has nudge Tyson to get him to repress his eyeroll. 

“So what are we doing?” Gabe asks. 

“We’re summoning the Queen Mab that’s doing this to you.” 

“Queen Mab?” Tyson repeats, raising his eyebrows to his hairline. 

“She gallops night by night through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love.” Josty quotes. 

“Okay, he’s definitely making you smarter.” Tyson mutters, and Josty flips him off. 

“Hey, I went to college.” He defends himself, crossing his arms. “I had to do the speech for my Theatre class.” 

“You actually went to that?” 

“The dude playing Romeo was hot.” Josty explains, and Tyson nods. 

Josty lights all the candles, and has the three of them sit in a triangle at each point. Tyson makes a joke about whether they have to hold hands, and they do actually have to hold hands. Not that that’s a hardship for Gabe, Tyson’s hand warm in his. 

Josty says something, maybe in Latin, and there’s a puff of smoke, and standing in the circle of candles is a little girl, with a burgundy and blue bow in her hair. 

“Took you long enough,” The little girl says with a yawn. “Keeping you busy for so long was exhausting.” 

Gabe stares at her, and blinks, and suddenly she’s tiny. A delicate, dangerous thing, mothlike wings shimmering in the candlelight. She’s got the haze of moonlight about her movement, and a dangerous looking whip sitting on her hip. 

“Did someone send you to distract me?” Gabe asks, and the Queen Mab curtsies. 

“As the Storm Queen commands.” She says sardonically, rolling her eyes. “It really took you that long to figure it out?” 

Gabe furrows his brow, wonders what she could possibly be distracting him from. Sam is still gone, excised from this dream, but he glances over at Tyson, who is staring at the Queen Mab with obvious wonderment. Tyson’s still here. 

“Well, we found you out.” Gabe says, hard edge to his voice. “Let me wake up.” 

The Queen Mab laughs, like a cacophony of bells, and Gabe has to steel himself not to flinch. “Are you sure though? You might not like what you see when you wake up.” 

Gabe feels Tyson’s hand warm in his, and nods. “I’m sick of dreams.” He says, and the fairy smiles. 

“You should be sick of dreamers.” She says, and she snaps her fingers.

// 

Gabe wakes up in a hotel bed. 

The storm rages outside and rattles the windows behind him, and the clock on the bedside table reads 1 A.M. “We did it.” Gabe says softly. “I’m awake.” He reaches for Tyson, to hold him for the first time on a new day. 

The other side of the bed is empty, and cold. 

Gabe gets up, rubs the sleep out of his eyes. “Tys?” He calls out, to no answer. He pushes himself to check the bathroom, even the hotel closet, and Tyson is still nowhere to be found. Gabe pulls his phone from the charger and calls Tyson, heart heavy in his chest. There’s a buzzing underneath the bed, and Gabe finds Tyson’s phone with just a picture of him and Nate making faces to greet him as the lockscreen. 

There’s a buzzing in Gabe’s ears as he heads down the hallway to Nate and Tyson’s room. He raps on the door, three times insistent. There’s a grumbling behind it, and Gabe’s ready to lay in on Tyson for leaving him alone like that when Nate answers the door, shirtless and grumpy. 

“What did Tyson do now?” Nate asks, voice weirdly deep. “Did he break himself wrestling again?” Gabe blinks at him. 

“He’s not here?” 

Nate tenses. “Dude, did you lose him?” 

“Who lost who?” Comes a voice behind Nate, and Gabe looks up to see Mikko, also very shirtless, looming behind Nate. 

“What’s happening here—” Gabe shakes his head.”You know what, nevermind, I don’t have time to unpack all of that—I’ve been stuck in a dream for two weeks and Tyson is gone.” He lays out, and Mikko’s eyes widen. 

Nate, who had been trying to push Mikko away and hide the reddening of his ears, instantly sobers up. “Did they take him? I thought we had more time.” 

“Apparently not.” Gabe says, with a grimace. “Sam’s not injured, is he?” Nate and Mikko look at him like they have no idea what he’s talking about, so there’s that at least. 

There’s a rush of noise from the other end of the hallway, and Josty and JT burst out of their room. 

“It worked!” Josty says, too loud for the witching hour. JT is being dragged along behind him by his shirtsleeve, rubbing his forehead exasperatedly. “Landy, tell him about the magic I did.” JT looks at him balefully.

“How do you know about the magic you did?” Gabe asks, and Tyson shrugs. 

“Dream Me thought I could do it, so we used your magic to make me remember.” He looks really proud of himself. “Do you think we could get everyone to think the one where I scored a hat trick was real?” 

“Okay, that was definitely a dream.” JT says. Josty punches him in the shoulder. 

There’s the sound of another door opening, and EJ barrels into the hallway with a bleary eyed Sam in tow. “What are y’all doing out here? Are we swinging? Did no one invite me to the swing party?” 

“What is a swing party?” Sam asks, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. 

EJ wraps an arm around his shoulder protectively. “Nothing you need to worry about, G.” 

“I could do some swinging.” Josty says cheerfully. 

“No.” JT responds instantly. 

“Don’t tell me what to do, Jompher.” 

Gabe groans, fingernails digging into his palms. If Tyson were here, Gabe notes, he’d be roasting them right now. Except he wasn’t here right now, missing a prime roast opportunity because he was too busy being spirited away. Gabe puts his fingers over his lips and Mikko, catching his eye, does the same. 

They both do a simultaneous, bird call of a whistle, making Josty jump and Sam startle and Nate glare at them both. 

“Not to interrupt your sex party plans.” Gabe says, biting an edge off to his voice. “But are any of you going to help me save my boyfriend from getting enslaved by fairies or am I going to have to do it myself?”

// 

They still don’t know anything. 

They’re all crowded into Gabe’s hotel room—the tight space made even tighter by JT and Josty insisting on waking up Kerf—trying to come up with a game plan. Kerfy has somehow managed to produce a whiteboard, and they have Tyson’s name, and Len’s, and Queen Mab’s, and circled twice in the middle is Storm Queen with two question marks around it. 

The Queen Mab giving away that the Storm Queen was the one who took Tyson was something, but neither Gabe nor Sam were from anywhere near Vancouver, and they had no idea where her court was. The storm—her doing, obviously—kept Josty from reaching his mother no matter how many times he tried, and Gabe is only more and more aware of the ticking clock of the witching hour. 

“What if we trade Tyson for something else?” EJ ventures. He’s commandeered one of the armchairs for himself, and Sam, who is sitting perched on the arm staring out the balcony window. 

“What do we have that they could want?” Nate asks, looking up from where he’s messing with Tyson’s phone—his thumb could unlock it, because of course it could. “What do fairies like?” 

“Firstborn?” Mikko tries. 

“No,” Gabe says sharply. “We’re not giving up any children for any deal. That’s what got us into this mess.” 

“It doesn’t matter if we don’t know where they are.” Kerfy reminds them, in a tone that betrays how many group projects he’s had to keep on track in his life. He’s wearing glasses and a high turtleneck, and Gabe is suddenly grateful they’ve got someone with some semblance of responsibility on this team. 

Sam suddenly breaks out his reverie, shaking his head. “Is no use. I cannot call anyone through the storm from here.” EJ looks at him curiously, as if wondering how he’d be able to do that without a cell phone. 

Gabe grits his teeth, pulling at the pillow Tyson slept on. He kicks himself for letting Tyson take them, for spending so much time caught up in a dream instead of doing what he was supposed to as a captain, let alone as a boyfriend. Mikko puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes it reassuringly. 

“You will find him.” Mikko says sagely. “You two always getting in each other’s way.” 

Gabe musters up a weak smile at that. 

“Nothing from your mom?” JT asks Josty, softly. He’s got his own phone out, presumably trying to get a hold of her too. Josty shakes his head. 

Gabe wishes his own mother were here. She was practical and levelheaded, knew so much about fairies and deals, keeping them out and squashing them. She knew how to hold on to what was hers, even if he got a little lost along the way. Gabe looks up from his hand, and then to the storm, and— 

“I have an idea.” Gabe says, standing up abruptly. “Do any of you know someone who lives close by?” Kerf and Josty both perk up, but Nate’s the one who answers first. 

“I’ve got someone who owes me a favor.” Nate says, and Gabe can tell he’s thinking something up too—he’s got the same look on his face that he does when he’s calculating a play.

“Can you get us there quickly?” 

“He should only live about fifteen minutes away.” Nate says. He glances at the storm outside the window. “Maybe twenty.” 

“Nate, Mikko, EJ, Sam, you’re with me.” Gabe commands, putting his captain voice on in full force. He looks at Josty, JT, and Kerf, who all look like they want to object. 

“You’re benching us?” JT asks, his voice sharp. 

Gabe crosses his arms and sighs. “Look, if things go south, we’re gonna need someone on the bench.” He clasps a hand over Josty’s shoulder. “This isn’t going to be easy.” He tells him, and Josty’s eyes widen, and he nods. 

“We’ll keep trying to get my mom. And we’ll get the rest of the boys prepared in case something happens.” He sets his jaw, and looks Gabe in the eye. “Nothing’s going to happen. Just fucking do it, okay?” 

Gabe smiles at him, with too many teeth. 

//

EJ manages to find a Lyft big enough to fit them and crazy enough to be driving in this storm, a middle aged Asian woman with a Cadillac who raises an eyebrow at four big burly blond men and Sam Girard sliding into her car. 

“What’re you all trying to do out there?” She asks, a little bit of delight in her voice. 

“Trying to get back an idiot.” EJ volunteers, and she smiles gleefully. She drives like the thick sheets of rain coming down like houses on them are nothing to her, turning corners with expert ease. 

She chatters to Mikko, who as the biggest, got the front seat, about her son as they go. Gabe eyes the rosary beads hanging from her rearview mirror, and hesitantly says a quick prayer. 

“Since when were you religious?” EJ asks, nudging his shoulder. 

“I figure we’re going to need all the help we can get.” Gabe tells him honestly. 

“Well, you did it wrong.” EJ says, rolling his eyes. “You do the cross like this.” 

Nate confirms the building they park next to, a tall brownstone apartment building not too far from their hotel. “Stay safe out there,” says their driver as they get out. 

“Safe as houses.” Nate tells her politely. 

“Safe as life.” EJ says with a wink and a bright, toothless grin. 

They’re half-soaked in the run from the car to the entrance of the building, and Nate presses one of the buzzers over and over again impatiently. “Get up, bro!” Nate hisses at the speaker. “It’s Mack, let me in!” 

There’s a groan that sounds very familiar but Gabe can’t place, and the door buzzes to accept them. 

They follow Nate through the lobby and to the elevators, until he reaches a door and knocks on it loudly. The door opens, and there, wearing sweatpants and a confused expression and nothing else, is Brock Boeser. 

“Come in, I guess?” He says hesitantly, as the entire Colorado Avalanche starting lineup piles into his living room. 

“Where’s your kitchen?” Gabe demands without preamble. 

“Back there, uh, Troy can show you.” He gestures towards Troy Stecher, who waves from the other side of the room. Gabe barrels past Boeser as Nate asks him something, pausing only to note that Boeser’s sweatpants do in fact have Juicy written on his ass. 

“Do you have a cast iron skillet you’ve never used?” Gabe asks. Stecher blinks. 

“Yeah, how did you know that?” 

“You’re hockey players.” Gabe says dismissively, and gestures for Stecher to grab it for him. 

“The Sedins gave it to us.” Stecher says, fishing the skillet out of the cupboard. Gabe looks at it, shiny and new, and gestures for Stecher to take off the packaging and put it on the stove. “Oh yeah, you can’t touch it, right? Did you want me to cook something for you?” 

Gabe rolls his eyes. “No, I can take it from here.” He says, brushing past Stecher to turn on the stove to the highest it’ll go. He leans on he counter while he waits, watching it get hotter and hotter and Stecher hovers nervously in the doorway to the kitchen. 

“You’re a like, a troll right? A changeling?” Stecher asks, hesitantly. Gabe doesn’t take his eyes off the skillet, and grunts affirmatively. Normally, he’d appreciate that someone didn’t call him a fairy first, but he’s a little busy at the moment. 

“Can you tell when you meet another changeling? Like can you see them or sense them or whatever?” Stecher goes on, Gabe frowns. 

“Not usually. Changelings are supposed to hide what they are until they have to. Most of the time they don’t even know.” Gabe explains. He’s never actually met another changeling, or at least, not consciously on either side. 

“Now, if you met another changeling, could you—” 

“Troy.” Boeser says, a hint of warning to his voice as he comes up behind Stecher, who crosses his arms at him defiantly. 

“He can help! He’s the only other one we know, and he’s like, managed to be normal and everything.” Stecher says. Gabe finally turns to look at them, eyes narrowed. “He can help.” Stecher repeats firmly. Boeser groans. 

“Ugh, fine.” Boeser mutters, running a hand through his long hair. “You know Petey?” 

Gabe can instantly picture Pettersson, with his big eyes and his staring. “Pettersson? What about him?” 

“We think he’s a changeling.” Boeser says. 

“More than think, dude.” Stecher adds. “He tried to eat us.” 

“He said he was sorry!” Boeser snaps at him before turning back to Gabe. “He didn’t mean to.” 

Stecher nods. “He didn’t mean to.” 

Gabe takes a deep breath. “Of course he didn’t mean to. You managed to calm him down?” Gabe has never met another changeling, but he’s heard stories, all the stories. Perfectly innocent boys and girls turning on their friends and family, leaving carnage in their wake. Most of them regretted it. 

“Yeah.” Boeser confirms. “He doesn’t want to hurt anybody. He says he keeps hearing music, fairies trying to get him to do things.” Boeser shakes his head. “He wants to stay with us, like you do.” 

“Not for long.” Gabe mutters. Neither of them catch it, and he shakes his head. “Ask Nate for my number, tell him to call me later.” He’d spent weeks in a dream with Pettersson, and he had no inkling that the boy could be like him—but maybe because he didn’t know, Pettersson was just normal in the dream. Gabe’s got another headache, and he turns back to the skillet, watching the iron get red hot. “Tell everyone to cover their ears,” he says to the two Canucks, who take a second, but Boeser does as he asks. Stecher puts his hands over his ears. 

Gabe pulls the sleeve of his sweater up over his elbow, lifts up his hand, and thinks of Tyson as he plunges the palm of his hand onto the hot iron surface. Pain shoots through every inch of him from the nerves on his palm, and he screams, a shrill inhuman sound that sends vibrations through every inch of the apartment. There’s cries from the other room, and the shattering of glass. Gabe steps back, his hand raw and blistering with pain, and bright gold—his glamour’s broken. Good. His friends barrel in, Nate brandishing what looks like a five iron, there’s a refraction of the light, and his mother is there, skin shimmering gold against the linoleum. 

Well, his birth mother, anyway. 

“What have you done to yourself, child?” The troll woman says, her voice the scraping of flint against stone. 

“I’ll come to the Mountain King.” Gabe says, voice hoarse and raw, not bothering with her question. “I’ll give myself to you and him, if you help me.” 

His mother’s smile is all sharp angles, cutting into the light. 

//

The Storm Queen’s court is under the bay. Gabe goes with the Mountain King’s boon and his mother’s leash around his neck. Nate comes down with a whole set of Boeser’s golf clubs—and a quick look at them confirmed there was enough iron in them to pack a punch against his kind. 

“How are we supposed to get underwater?” Mikko asks, when they’re all pressed together in Boeser’s car as he drives them out to where they’ll supposedly find the Storm Queen’s court. Everything’s even more excessively cramped with Gabe in his troll form—although even his troll form isn’t as tall as Mikko and EJ. “We supposed to swim?” 

“Do we need to get you water wings?” EJ asks. He nods up at Boeser. “Do you have a pair of XXXXL water wings for deer?” 

“I can do that.” Sam says, so packed in next to EJ that he’s basically in his lap. “I can get us there.” EJ furrows his brow. 

“How?” 

“G, just tell him.” Gabe groans, fishing the Seeing Stone out of his pocket and getting ready to chuck it at EJ’s head. Sam squirms uncomfortably, and sighs. He snaps his fingers, and EJ yelps, followed by echoing exclamations from everyone in the car except Gabe, as Sam breaks his glamour.

“Wha—what?” EJ stutters, for once, hand reverently ghosting a hair’s width away from Sam’s shimmering wings. 

“I didn’t learn opera from Stepbrothers.” Sam admits.

“I knew that always sounded like bullshit!” Nate says.

Boeser—who surprisingly isn’t freaked out by their fae forms as the others, probably because of Pettersson, now that Gabe thinks about it—clears his throat as he reaches the beach. “Call me when you get back. I’ll have Troy bring the other car, since you’ll have another person,” He says, and Gabe’s glad suddenly, that Pettersson has someone like him in his corner. 

The storm has cleared out the beach, despite the fact that there seems to be an eerie lull to it here, where the moonlight hits the water. The sea churns, hungry and waiting, but there’s a stillness here, a quiet even to the sand beneath their feet, and Gabe knows more than anything that Tyson is somewhere underneath the ocean’s surface. Here, in the eye of the storm, Gabe can hear the music of the Court.

Sam walks, floats really, to the edge of the water, swiping his hand over where he moonlight touches. He makes a ripple when he does, and it echoes through the ocean. “This is it. Barries is here.” 

“You said you had way to make sure we can go underwater?” Mikko asks, and Sam nods, strides up to him, and stands on his toes to kiss him. 

EJ and Nate make a surprisingly similar, indignant noise. 

Just as quickly as it started, Sam pulls away, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. Mikko is blushing all over, sort of sputtering, and they’re all staring at them in askance. 

“What was that, G?” EJ asks, his voice strained. 

Sam shrugs. “That’s how you cast the charm.” He explains, like it’s obvious. Gabe shakes his head, and takes a step. 

“All right, lay it on me.” Gabe tells him, moving towards Sam so that he can catch him in a kiss mid-stride. Sam is smaller, slighter than Tyson, but there’s something similar enough about his dark curls and dark eyes—Sam’s wings flutter, and Gabe can feel magic pouring into him from Sam’s lips, and the similarities end. The feeling of someone else’s magic being worked on him is an itch under his skin, far and away from Tyson’s comforting lips. When Sam draws away, there’s a catch in Gabe’s throat, and he know the magic worked. 

Sam goes to Nate now, and kisses him quick and clinical. Gabe glances at EJ, who has his hands balled up into fists at his side, stiff and tightly coiled, and Mikko, who has crossed his arms and is staring at the sand like he’s trying desperately to find something more interesting in it. 

“Last one, mon chum.” G says, as he comes up to EJ. There’s a heavy silence hanging in the air, for a second, before Sam rolls his eyes and pulls EJ by the collar into a kiss. EJ wraps his arms around his defense partner, pulling him up into the air to kiss him more deeply. When it lasts for longer than the other three kisses combined, Gabe coughs, and they pull away from each other. 

“Follow the moonlight.” Sam says, voice stripped and hoarse, pointing out over the water. EJ’s kind of smiling dopily. “Cannot miss it.”

With that, he turns away, and EJ’s smile turns into a frown. “Where are you going?” He asks, one hand lingering over Sam’s wrists. Sam smiles at him, at all of them, small and smug. “I thought of someone else we could ask for help. Go, I’ll meet you.” He looks at Gabe, asking him for his trust, and Gabe gives it. 

“Be safe.” Gabe commands, and Sam crooks another smile, gently pulling away from EJ. 

“Safe as life.” Sam repeats, winking at EJ, before his wings start to shimmer and he pulls up into the air, and disappears back in the direction of the storm. EJ watching as he goes. 

Gabe stares out over the water. Tyson is there, somewhere. “Let’s go get our boy.” He says, determined set to his jaw. 

“Are we supposed to like, strip?” Nate asks, raising an eyebrow at the bay in front of them. 

“Afraid to get a little wet, MacKinnon?” EJ teases, getting back to himself. Gabe rolls his eyes, and without another moment’s hesitation, wades into the water, and keeps walking. The magic Sam gave him seems to pulse as he hits the waterline, and Gabe blinks. 

He’s underwater, but he’s walking through the water like he’s on solid ground. One by one, the others join him. EJ, then Nate, then Mikko. There’s a dancing stream of lights at his sides—Mikko marvels at them, eyes wide—unearthly corals and bioluminescent plants, fish that are not fish, creatures with extra eyes or fins or arms entirely, playthings of atrocious inhumanity laying a path to the Court. 

The Storm Queen’s Court is a monstrosity of glass and coral, tides swirling whimsically around it. The grand doors to the Court are wide open to an inky black darkness, more menacing than inviting, music streaming out half-muffled by the water. Gabe makes a beeline for them, urging his teammates to follow. He faces the suppurating void of the Storm Queen’s Court, and something in his heart skips. Tyson’s close. Tyson’s there. He takes a deep breath, and he plunges into the darkness. 

All the air is sucked out of the room. No, Gabe realizes, that’s the water. Gabe is soaking wet, dripping on a marble floor. The Storm Queen’s Court is flashing lights, garish, extravagant gold, swimming in front of him. There are fae of all types, fairies and trolls, pucks and sprites, crowding on each side of the wall. There’s a band, an orchestra really, playing raucously in the corner. They’re in a long throne room, and Gabe sees a fairy, silver crown on her head and a jade eyepatch over one eye sitting on an alabaster throne. Her hair is long and scraggly, her wings spined and leathery like a bat’s. Gabe’s eyes flit to a figure next to her, a dark slip of a man dressed in all silver. Gabe would recognize those shoulders anywhere. 

“Tyson!” He calls out, and all the sound in the room quiets. 

“You address a peon before you address your Queen?” The Storm Queen speaks, her voice the crashing of waves against rocks, of a shipwreck disappearing into the surf. “Announce yourself, changeling!” She commands, and the force of it tries to cut through to Gabe’s core. But he is a captain, and he sets his teeth against it. 

“My name is Gabriel Landeskog, Captain of the Colorado Avalanche. Under the authority of the Mountain King, I claim Tyson B—”

Suddenly, there’s a burst of noise from the doors behind him as Nate, EJ, and Mikko appear, falling all over each other in a heap, scrambling to get up and get their bearings. 

The Storm Queen laughs, a jagged and dangerous thing. “This is the company you keep?” She asks. She turns to Tyson, who stares at her distantly, dispassionately. “This is your band of saviors?” She snaps her fingers, and out of the crowd materializes a group of fairies in silver armor, sharp and deadly with teeth like sharks closing in on them. She takes a look at the band, and they start to play a song, lilting violins and synthesizers that sounds strikingly familiar.

“Seriously?” EJ says, trying to get himself upright. “Is loving that ABBA guy just a fairy thing?!” 

Well, if there’s any song to fight a war to, Gabe supposes it might as well be Gimme, Gimme, Gimme. 

Gabe helps up Mikko and EJ, and Nate pushes himself up, brandishing a golf club that in his hands feels as dangerous as any Champion’s sword. 

One of the Storm Queen’s knights lunges towards Mikko, and Nate swings out with his golf club to intercept him, the iron sinking against the knight’s shoulder with a satisfying sizzle. He’s got Boeser’s golf clubs strapped to his back like a quiver of arrows, and he motions for them all to grab one, and Mikko and EJ do. Gabe brandishes a claw, built for rending flesh, and tackles the nearest knight. 

The Storm Queen laughs, again, and snaps her fingers. There’s a rumbling beneath them. as the floor between them and the throne starts to splinter, and rise up in waves, the walls of the room expanding as the throne rises up into the air, and a grand staircase sits between them and Tyson. 

“Fucking fairies!” EJ curses, sideswiping a blow from a knight.“No offense!” He yells at Gabe. 

“None taken, I’m a troll!” Gabe reminds him, as he swipes at a knight blocking the stairs. He looks up to where the Storm Queen is dancing in her throne, Tyson at her side. “I’ve got to get up there!” He yells, and Mikko nods at him from where he’s smashing a golf club into the side of a burly fairy who still manages to be shorter than him. 

“We’ll keep them busy!” Mikko says, and Nate, jamming the head of his club into someone’s stomach, yells at him to go. 

“Need a ride?” EJ asks, kicking a fairy and swiveling to join Gabe, back to back. 

“What? Are you going to carry me?”

EJ scoffs, and calls out, to nowhere in particular. “Biz Nasty! Yip yip!” 

There’s an ominous neigh in the distance. 

Gabe sees a ripple in the air behind EJ. A column of flame erupts, and trotting out of it, Gabe sees a single, ebony hoof. It kicks out from the fire, knocking over a knight and a monster bursts from from the flames, the fire coalescing around its hooves. EJ has called a giant of a creature, all sharp, deadly angles and gnashing teeth. Its mane is an ethereal wisp in the wind. There’s something dark and unknowable in its eyes. EJ holds out his hand, and the—the horse—nudges its muzzle against his palm. 

“EJ, what the hell is that?” Gabe asks. A knight creeps up behind the creature and it kicks backwards, melting a hole in their armor and setting him screaming. 

EJ pets the horse’s muzzle placidly, pulling himself up onto the thing’s saddle. “It’s Biz Nasty.” He explains, rolling his eyes. “I told you he was evil. Aren’t you buddy? Who’s my evil boy?” He scritches the monster behind the ears, and Biz Nasty preens under his touch. EJ settles himself in the saddle extends a hand out for Gabe. “Are you coming or am I gonna have to save your dumb boyfriend myself?” 

High above them, the Storm Queen claps her hands excitedly, and stands, waving for Tyson to offer his hand for a waltz. Gabe growls, a deep rumble in his chest, and clambers up onto the horse.

Biz Nasty takes Gabe and EJ’s combined weight effortlessly, swatting away approaching fairies as if they were flies. EJ directs him up the stairs, just as a trio of knights starts closing in from behind them. 

“Heads up!” Nate yells, and there’s a giant blur as something smashes into the fairies, knocking them over like bowling pins. Gabe recognizes the antlers, and realizes its Mikko, pinning a fairy underneath his hooves. “Are you two still here?!” Nate calls out, ducking a sword and smashing the head of his club into a fairy’s wobbling chin. “Can you go?! We’ve got this!” Mikko grunts out an affirmative, bounding into the air to grapple his antlers against a cyclops’ claws. 

“Yip yip!” EJ calls again, and Biz Nasty gallops from stair to stair. A fairy with sharp wings and talons flies in their path, and Gabe tries to swipe at it. EJ yeehaws excitedly instead, smashing the fairy in the chest with his golf club. 

As they get higher and higher, Gabe catches sight of Tyson and the Storm Queen. Tyson’s eyes are glazed over as he gets caught up in the dance. She pulls him close, drags blue lips over his ear, and Gabe sees red. 

He leaps from the horse, without warning, and Biz Nasty bucks, EJ dropping his golf club trying to hold on. Gabe grabs it by the middle, fighting past the pain as the iron in the shaft touches his skin, and he swings it as hard as he can into the side of the Storm Queen’s face. The Storm Queen screams and doubles over as he clambers over her to pull Tyson down, hold him in his grasp. 

Tyson’s eyes are blank, empty, meaningless and dark. He’s brimming with magic, rolling over his core, surrounding and smothering him. “C’mon Barrie.” Gabe murmurs pulling him close to his chest. Tyson doesn’t respond. “Tyson, please. I’ve got you, okay? Come back to us. We’re here for you.” 

Desperately, Gabe presses their lips together, trying to pour as much magic into Tyson as he can, trying to call that part of himself he’d given to Tyson, trying to give back that part of himself Tyson had given to him. He runs his hands through Tyson’s hair and pulls him as close as he can, and suddenly, Tyson’s kissing back. One hand wraps around Gabe’s hip, the other going straight for one of Gabe’s horns. 

“Hey, Big Head.” Tyson says, almost without thinking about it, strength seeping back into his voice. His eyes widen, and he gasps against Gabe’s mouth. “Gabe? You came?”

Gabe opens his mouth to say something, to laugh, when the Storm Queen shrieks. The sound of it sends a crack of thunder pealing through the Court, windows rattling at the echo. 

“You impudent whelps!” The Storm Queen screams, silver blood dripping from the side of her face even as the wound stitches itself up in front of Gabe. “How dare you try to—” 

There’s another rumbling, coming from outside rather than inside, this time, and a shattering of glass. Fairies—the courtiers watching all the proceedings ravenously from the sidelines—start to scream and scatter as the sound of rushing water starts to fill the Court. Glass rains over the orchestra, and the music halts abruptly. There’s the shadow of something behind Gabe, and Tyson pulls away from him enough to see, eyes wide. 

“Ogopogo?” Tyson says, mouth agape, and Gabe turns to follow his gaze. High above them in the rafters, slithering in from a hole smashed in the glass ceiling, is a serpent, a dragon, the length of the whole Court over. The water spilling into the Court starts to bubble and erupt in geysers up to the roof. The Storm Queen, left speechless for once, readies herself to wave her hand and cast a spell, when Ogopogo catches sight of her—and this is when Gabe notices the tiny figure, sitting on the dragon’s head. 

“Looks like Sam found a friend.” Gabe says with a laugh, and he can hear EJ hollering as the dragon slams into the Storm Queen, sending her flying backwards and smashing into the Court’s back wall. 

The Court is still and quiet now, as Ogopogo descends to drop off Sam. There’s a burst of fire as EJ and Biz Nasty canter over the staircase, and Nate, Gabe notes, riding Mikko. They both jump off, EJ running towards Sam and Nate towards Tyson, Mikko galloping behind to meet them. 

“Hey guys.” Tyson says, smile bright and easy. “You all really came to save me, huh?” 

“Of course we did, dumbass.” Nate says, at the same time as EJ says, “You owe me twenty bucks for hooking up with Gabe.” Mikko just grunts, pawing at the ground. 

Suddenly, there’s the sound of tinkling glass, Mikko looks up, and Ogopogo rumbles. Nate readies his golf club and Sam holds his hand out to cast a spell. Gabe steps in front of Tyson, who picks up EJ’s discarded golf club on the ground. He looks quizzically at the club, and at them, and grips it tight. EJ calls for Biz Nasty, who whinnies menacingly. 

The Storm Queen pulls herself out of the rubble, single eye shining red. She looks at them, assembled in front of her, gazing at Tyson. “Fine.” She declares, voice sanded down to a wisp. “If this mortal is worth so much, you can have him. I relinquish my claim. Tell the Mountain King I will come for my due.” 

Tyson looks the Storm Queen straight in the eye, and gives her his most charming smile. “Thank you.” He says, and it sizzles over the wound on the side of her face. 

The Storm Queen blinks, and laughs. She laughs, and laughs, and laughs, the sound of it vibrating what’s left of the glass. “Get the fuck out.” She says, and with a wave of her hand they’re all suddenly underwater again. 

Gabe gasps, but G’s spell is still working, and the water comes like air. Next to him, there’s another choking gasp, and Gabe reaches for Tyson who is flailing in the water. He pulls Tyson back into his arms and slots their mouths together, pouring his breath into him, and there’s a click as their magic fits together. Tyson starts to relax against him as he finds his breath. 

There’s a rush in the water as Ogopogo coils around them. Tyson grabs one of the ridges on Ogopogo’s side, and Gabe does the same, and they let the serpent pull them up, out of the water. 

The wind has picked up over the beach as the first hints of dawn start to peek through the broken storm. Tyson takes deep breaths as he plops off of Ogopogo and onto the sand. Gabe slides down next to him, with less force than he expects, and he realizes that somewhere in the midst of that, his glamour had come back up.

“So you claimed me?” Tyson asks, slotting up against Gabe’s shoulder. His hands seem restless, laying over Gabe’s thigh, and Gabe laces their fingers together. 

“You claimed me just as much.” Gabe reminds him, rubbing circles into Tyson’s palm with his thumb. Tyson meets his eye and smiles smugly. 

“Yeah, I did.” He says, and squeezes Gabe’s hand.

Mikko, human again and very naked, clambers over and into the sand, sending up a dustcloud in his wake.

“You’re gonna get sand everywhere, dude.” Nate grumbles as he slides casually down the side of the sea serpent. Mikko swipes some sand at him in response, and he smiles. 

“Where’s Biz Nasty?” Sam asks EJ, quietly. Sam’s glamour is back too, his wings tucked away and replaced by his normal, sleepy smile. 

“He’s fine, he went home. He’s a smart horse.” EJ says, pulling Sam towards him. “Where’d you get the dragon?” 

“Yeah,” Tyson pipes up. “Why would Ogopogo want to save me?” 

Sam chuckles, scratches the back of his neck. “I figured N’ha-a-itk would want to protect someone who wore his image for so long.” He beams at the spirit, who is slowly retreating into the water. “He remembered you.”

“Tyson’s got a face that’s hard to forget.” Gabe teases, and Tyson sticks a tongue out at him. He pulls himself up, walking over to the water spirit’s head to hold his hand out in deference. 

“Will it hurt him, if I say…” He trails off, looking at Gabe and G. Sam shakes his head. 

“He is not fae. He does not follow our rules.” 

“Thank you, then.” Tyson says. “I’m sorry I was ever scared of you.” The spirit makes a noise of acknowledgment before drawing back, disappearing into the water. Tyson turns back to all of them. “You all really had to go dramatic rescue on me, huh?” 

“You owe me twenty dollars.” EJ says again. Then, “Blame this guy.” He points a thumb at Gabe. “He was the one cooking his hands and sacrificing himself to the Lord of the Flies or whatever.” 

“Mountain King.” Gabe corrects, but Tyson is looking at him, part wondrous and part furious. 

Gabe considers his options, and considers explaining. “Nate and Mikko are having secret sex.” He says instead, and Nate squawks from over where he’s laying his jacket over Mikko’s shoulders. 

“Dogg??”

EJ laughs obnoxiously, and claps a hand over Gabe’s shoulder. “Sweet as this all is, Landeskog, G and I are fucking exhausted. Can we find Prince Charming from Shrek to drive us back or what?” 

“Yeah,” Gabe says, watching the man he loves sputter indignantly at his best friend. “Let’s go home.” 

The sun breaks in through the clouds, and far off in the distance, all Gabe can hear is the soft sound of the surf. 

// 

Tyson squirms as Gabe smooths his collar down with both hands. “Your bowtie has so much trouble staying straight.” Gabe grumbles. Tyson snorts at him. 

“Yeah, well so do I.” Tyson says, and he pokes Gabe in the chest. “How long is this thing supposed to take again?” 

Gabe crooks a smile at Tyson. “Just long enough to show off my cool mortal boyfriend and piss off a bunch of stodgy old trolls.” 

“Says you, I’m a certified troll charmer.” 

Gabe chuckles, and licks his lips. “Yeah, you are.” Tyson rolls his eyes, leans over, and kisses him softly. 

Tyson is warm to the touch. Warm, and real, and whole, and his. “Don’t eat anything or it’ll ruin regular food for you forever.” Gabe warns him, again. 

“Remind me again why I’m going to a party where I’m not allowed to eat anything?” 

“Because you love me?” Gabe tries. Tyson smiles wryly at him. “Because I’ll take you to Dairy Queen after, and I’ll let you suck my dick in the parking lot?” 

“I’ll take it.” Tyson says. “Let’s go fuck up some fairies.” 

“Trolls.” Gabe corrects. 

“I know what I said.” Tyson smiles so cheekily, Gabe can’t help but kiss him again.

**Author's Note:**

> 25k and i never found a way to mention that rasmus dahlin is a troll from trollhätten but it's important to me that you all know that 
> 
> check me out on [tumblr](https://samgirard.tumblr.com) or hit me up in the comments if you have any questions about the subplots that Gabe didn't have time for like how there's a suspicious amount of blond Swedish changelings in the NHL lately or Nate bullying Mikko into learning to turn into a deer at will and falling in love with him along the way or whatever is up with EJ and Sam the DM in me did way too much worldbuilding


End file.
